


Resonantia: Endgame, Set, Repeat

by navaan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Bearded Steve Rogers, Bodyswap, Illustrated, M/M, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Some Humor, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 00:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16691866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Post-IW.It starts with dreams: of a faraway planet, of a sky that's dying - and Tony standing right in the middle of all of it. Is Tony really dead or are the things Steve keeps experiencing real and Tony's somewhere out there? And what's he up to?Tony wakes up one morning - and isn’t on Titan. He’s dreaming he’s Steve back on earth. But how much of it is real?





	Resonantia: Endgame, Set, Repeat

**Author's Note:**

> This started when discussing _Avengers: Infinity War_ and _Kimi no Na Wa_ with takamei and grew into a story from there. It was as always amazing to work with you and I am eternally grateful that you've been around so much this year to pick me up when things got a little too much and I hope this story gives back to you. This whole thing would not exist without you!!
> 
> Big, big thank yous go to faite, who I know is very busy right now and to pazithi and takamei for reading, cheering and betaing at different stages of the draft. All remaining messes and mistakes are mine!!
> 
> [  
>  Art by takamei Her art masterpost is here.](https://takamei.tumblr.com/post/180342650355/it-starts-with-dreams-of-a-faraway-planet-of-a) Her art is just the BEST! Please leave her love and feedback!

[  
Art by takamei](https://takamei.tumblr.com/post/180342650355/it-starts-with-dreams-of-a-faraway-planet-of-a)

## Dream/Reality

_“Did you think you could beat me now if you couldn't before? Did you think you could deceive me when I see all now. Did you think you can lure me to a planet that is falling apart and that'll stop me?” Fire. With a loud boom the world exploded. “I'm sorry. I won't ever get to tell you.”_

Words lingered in the air and he was trying to catch them, but it was like they were gone before he was fully awake, even though he could feel them lingering, could still hear them whispering against his consciousness but not _understand_.

The pushed against his mind. Impact heavy like that of a hammer coming down on an anvil.

When he grasped for the strands of the dream, they slipped through his fingers like sand.

For the third time that week Steve woke with a jolt, his heart thumping in his chest as if it were trying to burst out of his ribcage and flee. Even now, Steve wanted to run, take flight -- or fight something. Adrenaline coursed through him. He sat up fully to look around for what might have woken him: a noise, a movement, a shadow. It was hard to get rest when your battle-honed senses reacted to any sound as a possible danger.

“Nightmares?” Thor asked. He was sitting on his own cot to Steve‘s left and looked like he hadn't moved an inch since Steve had fallen asleep, arms leaning heavily on his legs. He looked weary, like someone who was carrying the weight of the world and wanted none of it.

“I don’t know,” Steve said and swung his legs out of the bed. “Yes, I think it might have been.”

He got to his feet. Yesterday, he hadn’t bothered even getting his boots off. Now he regretted not trying to get a little more rest.

“We all share them,” Thor said gravely. He didn’t talk about _his_ nightmares, but Steve could imagine what they were like. 

Steve’s dreams weren’t haunted by the fall of Asgard. But if Steve if Steve were to describe the scene that met him every time he closed his eyes -- Wakanda spreading in all directions around them, damaged and burning in parts, meadows and grassland around the city that weren't the calm, green anymore, instead brown with uprooted earth and dried blood, still filled with the stench of battle and dead bodies and the dust of all the people who'd fallen into nothingness after Thanos won -- _nightmare_ would be the only word that came to mind. And the nightmare continued. It met him every day when he opened his eyes and stepped out into the world to keep it from falling apart. Young Queen Shuri requested their help when Wakanda had been attacked again two days ago, this time by an alien race they hadn’t ever encountered before.

Something about it had been different. More focused. Like someone had decided that Earth was a threat, that Earth was an easy target, that Earth needed to be taken out before it got back its strength.

And it was down half its people, like the rest of the galaxy.

Thor still hadn’t moved from his hunched position and Steve knew it wasn’t because he was tired. Asgardians didn’t seem to feel exhaustion in the same way the rest of them did. _Steve_ didn't. But the last year had been rough. Picking up the pieces wasn't new to him; sometimes it felt like that was all he was doing. He'd lost before, but he'd never lost a battle like this.

He was still trying to pick himself up from that.

“Heard from your people?” he asked Thor. The remaining Asgardians had reached Earth some time ago and were trying to settle on American soil. It had caused as much chaos as anything else they did.

“Banner's doing his best to help us build a city,” Thor said and nodded, meeting Steve's eyes. “He says we were better off with the Wakandans. He's not an engineer.”

Steve knew that wasn't all he'd been saying. Specifically, he remembered Bruce saying, “This would've been Tony's thing. He's the one who builds.”

Shuri was offering Wakanda's help, but she couldn't give as much as her brother could've given them a year ago. She was a young queen, left with the responsibility to rebuild one of the greatest countries on this planet in the wake of unspeakable loss and disaster. Wakanda had thrived for so long in secret, guarding its borders and standing up to anything that threatened its peace and prosperity. Wakanda's kings had done their share in bringing help where they could, but T'Challa was the first one to put it on the map and in return, what had that brought him?

Wakanda was still trying to recover and that was where most of its strength was focused at the moment.

“We all wish Tony was here,” Steve said quietly. “He was --” He stopped. Using the past tense hurt. They had no idea what happened to him after the attack in New York, but he'd never returned to them. “He would enjoy building a new Asgard.”

“He would have,” Thor agreed. “I'll have to return now. I can't let Brunhilde shoulder all responsibility on her own.”

Finally, Thor pushed himself to their feet. “Where will you go?”

“Where fires need to be put out.”

Thor laughed, but it was without humor. “You and Stark had that in common.”

“Have. We all _have_ that in common. We don't know what happened to Tony and I don't want to declare him dead if he might still be alive somewhere.”

“Would he not be here if he could be -- after all this time passing? Would he not have sent word? With his knowledge of machines, he would have found a way by now.”

Steve bit his lip hard. He hadn't meant to disagree or bring this up. For months now, he had cleanly avoided having the conversation. He was sure Tony _would_ be here if he could and that he wasn't here meant he couldn't be. But how well were the chances that he _couldn't_ be here but _was_ alive somewhere? Even the thought that Tony had likely been killed before the damn spaceship that took the keeper of the Time Stone -- and with it, Tony and Spider Man -- had ever reached its final destination. Tony did his best, but they had all been ill-prepared -- and when Thanos arrived he had done so with the same Time Stone to crush them all.

 _We should have stood together,_ he thought not for the first time. _Instead we let Zemo crush and divide us. And what did it leave us with? We put up a good fight but were doomed from the start. Without a plan. Without Tony._

He straightened his shoulders and nodded, but let his hand brush against the side-pocket that still held the phone, as if Tony would, at some point, call him on the old rugged burner despite everything. “I know. He would be here, but he isn't.”

 

Thor nodded too and they both fell silent, grieving for the friend that wouldn't return, and all the friends who were just gone.

“I'll check the perimeter,” Steve finally said, once the silence got too much, and pushed himself to leave the hut that they had been using for the last couple of days, located at the outer edge of Wakanda.

The morning air was crisp, but the sun would come up and bring the heat with it soon enough. Around him, the meadows were green again. The damage done on this side of Wakanda was already concealed by fresh, new grass. And yet, from where he stood, he could have walked to the spot where they lost Vision and Wanda, and where the Hulkbuster armor remained partly fused to the stone mass of a mountainside.

He started to walk, nodding as he passed the shepherds grazing their herds -- many of whom were highly trained guards watching the borders. Walking would help him keep his calm and regain his focus. Walking always helped.

“Captain Rogers!”

Hearing his own name made him stop short. Okoye was approaching. She must have visited some of the animal dens to the West.

“General,” he greeted as she caught  up.

“Out patrolling?” she teased because, of course, that was a job to be assigned to her own guards. She was a tall woman with striking eyes, who carried herself with pride. She'd been indispensable in keeping order in the kingdom since its king had so suddenly disappeared along with half of the world's population.

The lingering disquiet made him restless, rocking back and forth on his heel. He forced himself to relax, keeping his weight on one leg, as he waited for her to make the last few steps towards him. The nightmare, he realized, must have sunk its claws into him deeper than he thought. Or perhaps it was the unexpected talk about Tony after he'd carefully avoided the reality of never seeing him again.

“Out for a walk,” he deflected, not sure why he felt the need to patrol in the first place. _Something_ still had him on high alert. “And you? Making sure we're still here?”

“Thor will remain?”

“No,” he said with an uneasy frown. He didn't like the way the Avengers were scattered around the globe again, after they should have fought side by side from the beginning to win this fight. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it. Technically Steve and his handful of brave heroes were still criminals and the world that was just coming back to its feet was thanking them for their help; but so far, nobody had had the time to deal with their fugitive status.

So they continued on stealth missions, appeared when needed, and ran back to Wakanda when they needed shelter.

Okoye nodded. “A king should be with his people at a time of rebuilding.”

“Yes,” Steve agreed, “of course.”

“You will remain?”

Admittedly, he had nowhere else to go. “For as long as you'll have me.”

She inclined her head. “We can use your help to secure our borders.”

He could easily read into her words: they hadn't been able to quench all the trouble caused by the recent attack yet. He could help. The Avengers could help. Natasha and Rhodes would soon return from their mission to stabilize the situation in Southeast Asia, where the remaining government of Madripoor had decided to forcefully expand its influence across its borders.

“We will help where we can, General.”

“Then continue on your _walk_ , Captain.” She nodded towards the green as if she was wishing him well on his little stroll through his memory.

He nodded back, ready to go when the first shepherd called out to them. Steve did not speak or understand Wakandan, but he could guess it was a warning of some kind from the urgency in their voice. When he turned, he saw the flash that had appeared in the sky, very different from the crackling electricity if it were lightning; it appeared with a flash of fire red, for a second turning the sky into a sea of rusty red. Then the blue hue was back and something was falling -- in bits and pieces.

“Meteor!” Okoye called out and Thor emerged from the hut, swinging his ax, ready to lift himself into the air and throw himself at the pieces.

Steve was carrying the two black shields he'd been fitted with by Shuri, but he wouldn't be of much use on the ground.

With a shout, Thor let the sky light up and crackle with the power of thunder and lightning.

It was blinding, and Steve ducked behind his shields until he could look again.

The sky was clear. Around him some space debris was falling harmlessly and mostly burned before reaching the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Okoye asked, looking up at Thor who was hanging in the sky, an impressive sight to behold.

“Let's hope it wasn't the harbinger of more bad news,” Steve muttered -- because in recent experience, that was what it usually meant.

He could feel the tension in the general and her people. Wakanda had just survived another attack. Even the proud nation needed to catch its breath sometimes.

“I'll inform the queen. Let's see what this was.”

Steve nodded, still wound up and ready to strike if necessary. But so far, all remained quiet. Thor landed several feet away, looking unconcerned.

“Dust and stone,” he said loudly.

“Yeah, but where did it come from?” It had appeared in a flash and for a moment, Steve had thought he was looking at a sky not their own.

Thor studied the sky as if he were considering possible answers. “You think it was sent here?”

“I don't want to think that, but I want to know for sure.”

Beside him Okoye was talking to the electronically formed effigy of Queen Shuri, who quickly rattled down briefly what their sensor readings had picked up. “A portal?”

“Briefly,” Shuri's voice said. “A rift in space opened, fusing us to another section of the galaxy. That's all I can say right now. From what I see, nothing came through but pieces of... a meteor? I'll send a team to analyze. It’s still there, by the way --not visible, but there, closing fast. But nothing else is coming through.”

“We're not under attack?” Steve really wanted to believe it. Life had been rough lately for all of them; they all could use things playing out in their favor for once.

The image of Shuri turned to him and made a shrugging motion that betrayed her youth. “I see no signs of it now. We need to remain on our guard though.”

Her image vanished and Steve nodded to himself. Something about this seemed familiar, but for some inexplicable reason, he didn't feel nervous. Now that the _something_ had happened, his gut told him it was over. Everything was calm now. Even the animals behind them quieted again.

He marched towards the closest pieces of half-molten rock and debris that was peaking out of the earth around them. There was no sense of urgency in him anymore, only curiosity and the need to determine this wasn't the calm before the next storm. Thor and Okoye were standing near the hut, talking.

Most of what he saw looked like it might have been a meteorite. Rock and molten stone. Some pieces dug deep into the earth, some pieces were completely crushed by the impact. He hoped there wasn't something unseen creeping around Wakandan soil now and immediately tried to shake the thought. That was for the scientists to figure out. Nobody would be served by him overthinking this.

He walked out and around the perimeter left by the spray of impact and looked back to the others in the distance. They were far out of shouting range and Steve wondered how much more debris was spread out that he couldn't see.

As he looked around, something gleaming caught his eye.

Red.

Metal.

Shining with the sunlight catching on it.

He walked over to get a closer look. It was a triangular shaped piece of metal, slightly bent and protruding from the smoking earth. But it wasn’t the shape that drew his attention. It was the color.

 _Iron Man_ red.

He leaned down to inspect it. It was red with a piece of molten gold at once side that seemed to be infused with tiny specks of orange. It flickered in front of his eyes, happening so quickly that he wasn’t sure he had actually seen it. He leaned even closer, scared to touch it in case it was hot. But then it seemed to flicker and glow again and Steve felt compelled to take it.

For a moment he just held it, wondering how it fit so perfectly into his hand, as if it had been made for him.

The dream came back to him in that instant -- a dark and dusty sky, a quiet voice, destruction. Someone was whispering as if they were right beside to him, but he couldn’t hear their words.

He kept staring at the red and gold.

Thor was the first to approach him.

“What does this look like to you?”

“A lump of metal,” Thor said without much inflection.

“A lump of metal from space that’s red,” he pointed out.

“Lots of things in space are red.” Thor looked at him like Steve had lost his mind. Perhaps he had somewhere down the line.

Then it happened.

The buzzing noise. It took him a moment to listen and realize what it was.

Thor stared at him as he pocketed the little piece of metal, questions about it forgotten instantly, and grabbed at the pocket that held the burner phone. It vibrated in his hand, playing the terrible ringtone he’d set years back. When the phone was free he stared at it, as it laid there in his hand.

Ringing.

It couldn’t be...

He snapped it open, held it to his ear. With a shaky voice, he asked. “Tony?”

“Steve? Steve, is that you? You're alive?”

It was Tony! No doubt about it, the familiar voice, the one Steve longed to hear, was rough but clear over the line. “Tony? Where are you? Are you on the spaceship...?”

“Yes, it’s me, Steve.” A sob on the end of the line. “I thought you were gone... I thought everyone was... I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I never got to say it... couldn't save... yo... Bad... iming... Sorry. Wanted to...”

And then the voice was gone. As suddenly as he’d heard it, it was gone again, swallowed by the void.

“Tony? Tony! Tony, answer me!” Steve shouted but it was no use. The connection was gone. “Tony?”

Thor was staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Did you?” he asked and turned to Thor, desperate for him to tell Steve that he had heard the same.

“I heard the ringing of your phone, not the words spoken by...”

“You don’t understand! Only one person has this number... Only Tony has...” He held up the phone to inspect it. And there was the last call listed, the _only_ call his phone had ever received.

The caller ID read: TONY STARK.

_Tony._

“Thor,” he said and put the phone back to his ear and let it dial the number of its burner phone twin. “Call the others. Call Rhodes. Banner. Tony might need our help.”

The dial tone went on. Then a voice informed him that there was no such number.

“Fuck,” he said emphatically. “ _Fuck_.”

Okoye had appeared at their side, and she stared at him in astonished indignation. “I was about to inform you the team has arrived and all readings say the rift has closed.”

His eyes snapped up to meet her frowning gaze, then he met Thor’s eyes. He looked over the plane and realized there was a likely explanation, but he had to look at all the angles. 

“He’s alive,” he said. “Tony’s alive.”

* * *

Tony didn’t wake all at once. He kept his eyes closed, giving himself a grand total of another 60 seconds to come fully awake. To make sleep easier, he had started a work cycle of 36 hours to 5 hours of sleep and Nebula didn’t contest it. The only indication she noticed his general state of exhaustion -- that, quite honestly, had never left him -- had been her saying: “Quill needed a lot more sleep and he was never this efficient.”

Was.

From what he had seen, he had to wonder how any of them had thought they could fight Thanos or anyone else -- or let alone have survived out here in space. They had been such a ragtag band of... now dead people. He nearly let out a sob then, but instead opened his eyes and tried to still his breathing.

The moment he came fully awake he knew something was wrong -- and he had become so used to waking up to something being wrong that this shouldn’t have stood out. And that was what was wrong: something felt right.

Tony sat up.

The bed was as uncomfortable as he remembered, but the technology around him -- the walls, the organization of parts -- it followed the right pattern. It had been designed by a working mind, not by a space pirate and the human wannabe that had then worked on it over and over. 

_His_ mind.

The design looked too familiar.

He stared, thinking this over. Had he fallen asleep in the wrong part of the broken ship?

The sounds had changed.

No humming. No sound of Nebula working. Where was Nebula?

Clear air filled his lungs. No metallic smell met his nose.

Realization hit him like lightning.

He wasn’t on Titan.

Stumblingly, not trusting the world around himself, he came to his feet, had to hold himself up with one hand and... fuck. He felt disorientated, wrong. _What was wrong?_ There hadn’t been anything to get drunk on, so what was going on? Why where all distances slightly _off_. His hand caught on the wall too forcefully and suddenly a part moved, that he knew shouldn’t be moving. His knuckles were taut and white.

“Cap? Did you get some rest?”

Surprised, he jumped up and hit his head -- his back standing taller than he remembered -- apparently on a protruding part of the vehicle’s ceiling.

His hand came up at the bump that was forming on the back of his head. “Natasha? What happened to your hair?”

_And how the fuck are you here???_

She was blonde now, but still unmistakably Black Widow, and looking at him with an amused expression that was rarely directed at him when they’d met in reality. He watched her move around the space like she owned it, picking up equipment.

Yeah, this must be a dream.

“We both made  bad fashion choices together and I definitely came out on top. The beard looks much better on Thor.”

“What?” Tony reached up to figure out what was wrong with his Van Dyke and could only imagine that it might have suffered recently because keeping himself pretty hadn’t been high on the priority list. But his fingers came up and met a full-on beard, like he’d slept for so long that he turned into a lumberjack imposter overnight.

It was difficult enough to stand up, to see her (he realized by now he was probably on a Quinjet), but none of her words made sense to him. And what his fingers were feeling even less so.

Natasha finally looked at him and settled on the cot across from the one he’d apparently been sleeping on to watch what he was doing. She cocked her head to the side when she realized he was trying to feel his face like someone blind who had never seen themself. “Did you hit your head that hard or are you still dreaming, Steve?”

His eyes fell on his own hand that was gripping the edge of the cot to keep himself upright and only registered what he was seeing once he heard that name. He opened his mouth to say “ _What!?_ ,” this time with more emphasis, but suddenly everything that didn’t make sense before _made_ sense, and all the fucking things around him that were right and had no right _to be right_ were, in fact, terribly wrong. The hands were... Steve’s. When he looked down at himself, he knew he was wearing what remained of what must have been Steve’s Captain America suit once. But someone had modded it.

Someone not Tony.

It wasn’t shabby. He wasn't surprised by it either,  but he was feeling very grumpy about it.

“Steve?”

Oh, this was definitely a dream, because when the fuck did Natasha ever sound this worried? For Steve, maybe sometimes? For Tony? Had she ever?

He looked up, understanding that everything felt weird because he was a good head taller -- and younger and stronger and more virile and awesome, but most of all, not dying on an alien planet.

“Are you okay? I know what happened yesterday rattled you, but this isn’t the time. Bruce is waiting for us. You’re in charge here.”

“Okay,” he said, gritting his teeth. Of course Steve would be in charge. If this was Tony’s dream then, of-fucking-course. He didn’t even have the strength to shake his head at that.

“I'm fine,” he said and that was the thing that _really_ gave him pause. He _sounded_ like Steve. To his own ears, he sounded like a total stranger and at the same time, like he was talking in a voice that he heard far too often in his fucking dreams. “Finer than fine,” he said and opened his arms. “I mean, look at me. I’m Captain America.”

“You’re Steve Rogers and you insist that you’re no longer _Captain America_ , so which is it?” Natasha asked and didn’t seem convinced by his sudden bravado. “And you look terrible. We all do. I know this thing with Tony hasn’t been easy for you, but...”

“Hasn’t been easy for _me_?” Tonye was stuck on his own name being brought up in the conversation, like he was an unpleasant problem to deal with, and he wondered what exactly it was the “thing with Tony” that was on Steve’s mind today. Because as far as he knew, they wouldn’t ever have a thing between them again. “Just saying. How do you think things have been like for Tony?”

Natasha looked at him like he was being a child. “Steve, come on. We all get this is important to you, and that it’s been a bigger strain than usual. We all want it to be true.”

He made a disbelieving _huh_ sound because he wanted some of this -- the being-off-Titan part most of all -- to be true, but he still couldn't make sense of anything. He watched Natasha stick her tongue out at him and wondered if he’d electrocuted himself in that dump of a spaceship he was supposed to be on. But he was finally standing firmly on his own legs -- that weren’t his at all -- the knees no longer threatening to give out like that of new-born, if slightly overgrown, fawn. He was probably less doe-eyed right now, because that was the patented Tony Stark look, but he was sure Steve’s baby blues also did the job.

He was still inhaling the fresh air and he had the dreamy body of a super soldier at his disposal.

“Where are we?” he asked.

Natasha frowned. “We set down on the plains after the mission in Zagreb.”

“Plains of?”

“Jesus,” she said and threw up her hands. “Wake up, old man.” Her fist connected with his shoulder none too gently, but he didn’t even flinch when the pain was spreading through it -- because to his surprise, it didn’t actually hurt that much.

“I felt that.”

She quirked a perfect and much too blonde eyebrow. Why had she done this to her trademark red hair? “I hope so.”

Of course, she didn't get it. He had _felt_ it.

Were you supposed to feel things in a dream? Had he ever dreamt so vividly that his arm hurt _in the dream_? “Do you know the kinds of dreams you have that are so real that you...” he started, then remembered the last conversation he'd had with Pepper,  that fateful day when Strange walked into his life with Bruce in tow... His heart clenched remembering.

“Is this still about the phone call?”

He wondered what kind of phone call could have gotten Steve so bothered, but right now, he was too busy letting strong fingers glide along where Steve's current uniform design revealed his underarms.

He flexed, marveled at the feel of overwhelming strength curling through his arms. _I could use that when I wake up_ , he thought. _Just imagine how long I could keep going. We'd be out in space in a few days, instead of everything being a struggle._

All of this felt so real. The skin, the muscles, the sound of Steve's voice every time he opened _his_ mouth and spoke. He lifted the hand to inspect the fingerless leather gloves, wriggled the fingers -- _not my body, but I'm in control; is this my dream or Steve's?_ \-- and once again, realized how good it felt to be rid of the heavy gravity on Titan, pulling at his muscles more and more heavily every day with the planet's core shifting, and how marvelous it was to breathe fresh air.

The hatch was open. He could see a blue sky, green grass -- a world whole unbroken and ready to be met.

In the open hatch, Natasha stood with her hands on her hips and was studying him as if he'd grown another head. “You are weird today.”

Tony laughed, let it bubble up from the heart and enjoyed the rumble of Steve's voice that was ringing in his ears. Suddenly he was enjoying this.

Dream or not.

“Let's have breakfast,” he said and strode out the hatchway past Natasha.

Yes, he was going to enjoy this.

* * *

Steve woke up with his face stuck to the mattress and he wondered how he had ended up lying curled up on his side and the sheets tangled around his legs and arms like a cocoon; usually he fell asleep on his back, head resting on the pillow. His eyelids and limbs were heavy, his mind sluggish. He knew right away that he had been dreaming again: one of these vivid dreams that seemed to call to him from the other side of his consciousness, but that he couldn’t hold on to in detail.

Even now he thought that the thick air of an alien planet hung around him, but he realized he was in one of the rooms of the Wakandan government building. In _his_ room here; T’Challa had given it to him on his first visit here and made it clear that it would be his whenever he needed it, but Steve had rarely used it.

The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling-windows was a striking blue.

He sat up, reminded now why staying here had always felt awkward. It felt like Stark Tower -- Avengers Tower. And yet _not_. Because that home was a home he could never go back to. Even before half of humanity was wiped out, he had known that Tony had sold the tower. And why shouldn’t he? Because Steve and the rest of the team had been on the run, and _Tony_ was the one who moved to the Avengers Compound where he had previously set them up, but had not joined them while Steve had lived there.

Because he had stepped back as Iron Man, before their fight about the Accords.

Thinking about it now hurt more than ever.

Why was Steve here? How had he ended up here? It only brought up memories. He knew that. That was in part why he preferred staying out in the huts, closer to the borders that needed constant protecting.

Why had he decided to stay the night in here when he could be out there, staying in the Quinjet?

What had he been doing yesterday?

Something from his dream seemed to linger and that, he remembered now, had been about Tony. That must have been why -- and also why the thought of Tony seemed to bring along sorrow this morning.

And what about the thing he’d found...? What had it been again? Shaped metal from a meteor? Space debris? Where was it?

Was that why he was here?

Suddenly alert, he scanned the room, afraid that he’d given it away or misplaced it. What he saw first were his boots standing neatly in the corner by an armchair, his uniform thrown over the back. He swung his legs out of bed and looked down.

He was naked.

He hadn’t fallen asleep naked...well, probably ever. Although there had been the one time after the rainstorm when he’d been so drenched and stuck without anything dry to put on, but...this wasn’t like him. When was the last time he'd distanced himself from his uniform for a long stretch of time?

He contemplated that as he gathered himself up, walking to the bathroom, still nothing his surroundings as if he expected something to attack him. He was mentally retracing his own steps to figure out why he had decided to stay in the room at all.

Then he saw it: someone had left a scribbled note on the coffee table. 

_“Why would anyone sleep in the fucking Quinjet if they didn’t have too?????”_

It was underlined twice for emphasis. But it was only one of a number of scribbled notes that ran all across the page.

 _“REAL? Not real?”_ was written in the top corner and under that, someone had started to make two lists. Scribbled lists, now illegible and smudged by a dark brown stain.

Coffee?

Steve didn’t drink a lot of coffee. He had completely cut down on the habit while on the run.

There was no sign of any cup nearby either; nothing seemed to add up.

What the hell had been going on here? Had he not been alone when he’d fallen asleep _naked_?

He was still naked, but all thoughts of going to the bathroom and figuring this out were momentarily put aside. He realized that the chicken scratch penmanship looked like a mix of his own hand and someone else’s. Like he’d not been in control at all when he’d written it. He picked up the piece of paper to examine it closely. There was something about the curved lines that resembled his own writing, but the ragged edges the letters formed were not even close to what his handwriting looked like.

The ballpoint pen still rested on the page and Steve picked it up to write beneath: _“What the hell?”_ and was relieved to see that it didn’t match. It still looked familiar in a foreign sort of way and he couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

 _No_ , really, he thought uneasily. _What have I been up to?_

Perhaps one of his teammates could shed light on the situation later. Sighing heavily, trying to get his mind back in the game and take stock, he picked up underwear and the uniform and moved to clean up and get dressed in the bathroom.

Where he froze completely.

Someone had painted an oval on the mirror with something sticky and pink that looked like lipstick. Where the _hell_ would he have gotten lipstick? The oval was adorned with some uneven lines that he imagined represented hair, slicked back, to both sides of it, and more scratchy lines that must've indicated a beard, because two arrows pointed right it with words written beside them saying _“Like the hair”_ and _“Beard needs more effort!! Steve, please, what were you thinking?”_

He stared at the mirror for a long time, trying to make sense of it, and took in the mostly ruined lipstick laying beside the sink, the burner phone sitting right beside his other phone, the one he used to check in with the Avengers, and the device he used to stay in touch with Wakanda, as if someone had lined them up.

Had someone gone through his pockets?

Where was the metal then? The thing he had found in the space debris? Had it been taken? 

Fingers suddenly shaky he went through the pockets and there in one of the pouches it was, untouched. But why had everything else been lined up and not this?

And why the strange picture? What sort of message was that supposed to be?

Then it dawned on him. He stepped forward towards the sink and mirror and leaned forward to touch it -- right in the position someone would take to draw on the surface with lipstick. Everything lined up and he saw his own face reflected behind the lines. Someone had drawn over his face as he’d been standing there. Someone. Himself?

A memory tried to unlock itself and he nearly stumbled, heavy air filling his lungs with dust and the smell of debris around him. Space debris, but not in Wakanda. Rusty plains riddled with the ruins of a lost city?

The dream, he remembered, had been vivid.

And it had been about Tony.

He grabbed the burner phone first, forgetting about getting dressed, to see what was on it. _“Missed Call: TONY STARK.”_

He stared at it. The date and time, the name, the number, the contact. It had happened. The call had happened. The time and date were still the same. He’d heard Tony’s voice and, for a moment, spoken to him, despite all odds saying he was dead.

Despite all of Wakanda’s and Natasha’s and Thor’s intel saying there was no way Tony was alive.

He remembered all that.

He shut the phone and set it down again to finally put on some clothes, all the while staring at himself in the lipstick-smeared mirror.

For some stupid reason, he took his time brushing back his hair before studying himself once more.

Then it dawned on him -- as he stared at the pink lipstick words telling him _“Steve, please, what were you thinking?”_ \-- where he’d seen the way the line of this _S_ curved into the _T_.

“Stark,” he said out loud, the memory of Tony’s signature on the Accord papers clear in his mind. He reeled back as if burned, but still kept his eyes on the mirror.

Ghosts?

Was there such a thing?

Was everyone right and he was driving himself crazy?

Was Tony haunting him? Was this what he got now? Deserved? For splitting up the Avengers and letting Tony walk into this situation without a team to back him up? Had Tony died in space alone and was blaming Steve for it? Was it what _Steve thought had happened and was blaming himself?_

_That’s your Irish roots talking, Steve. No such thing as ghosts. You just wish this were all real and --_

He opened the tap and let cold water run over his fingers, doused his face until he was alert and thinking straight.

It helped, but did nothing to lessen the uneasy feeling.

A loud knock had him nearly jump out of his skin. He studied himself one last time in the smeared mirror before tearing himself away: he looked pale, uneasy, not at all like the Steve Rogers he needed to be right now. He straightened his shoulders and made sure to gather the burner phone and the metal piece he’d found before leaving the bathroom.

“Steve? You’re still in there?”

Even though he was unable to see her face through the door, he could imagine Natasha frowning and it happened again; his memory fragmented and the moment slipped as another woman’s frown med and mingled with Natasha’s, but he couldn’t place the memory -- or the features that seemed blueish and strange... He shook his head and went to open the door just as Natasha was about to knock again. Surprised, they stared at each other in the bright hallway.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly.

She looked him over with a grin. “Feeling better?”

Jim Rhodes stood at her shoulder with folded arms. “Cap,” he said and nodded.

“Rhodes? Something up?”

Something _had_ happened; he could see it in the quirk of Jim’s eyebrow and the way Natasha grinned at him.

“-- We’re just here to pick you up to see if you can eat any more waffles, of course.”

“ -- You hungry?”

They spoke at the same time. 

“Waffles?” Steve repeated, sure they were making fun of him.

Natasha pulled him along by the arm. “Perhaps it’s pancake day today?”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re having breakfast, Steve. We’re all glad you found your appetite again. It’s time you let yourself off the hook a bit. None of this is your fault.”

He stumbled out of the room, mind still on the strange markings on his mirror and the note on the coffee table. “I don’t feel like breakfast,” he complained and looked for Rhodes for help.

The man’s hands came up in a placating gesture and he took a step back. “No hugging today, man. That was weird yesterday.”

“Hugging?”

“See?” Natasha said and this time she sounded worried. “He was like that yesterday morning too.”

“Stress?” Rhodes suggested and then patted Steve on the shoulder. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Keeping us all going.”

Steve was still stuck on what they told him: “I hugged you?”

“You lunged yourself at him,” Natasha corrected.

“Said, you’d had another nightmare. You know about everyone…” Rhodes waved his hand back and forth in the air so he didn’t have to say it. He was talking about the way everyone else had vanished.

He didn’t remember. It made no sense at all. He wasn’t usually given to that kind of emotional outburst -- and certainly not with people he didn’t know that well. They’d made peace with their decisions. They’d talked once or twice about Pepper and Tony and how perhaps it was a mercy that she had been among the ones to vanish when he hadn’t returned home.

“Don’t you remember?”

He looked between them and then shrugged. “It’s been a long day. I hugged you?”

“You clung to him as if your life depended on it,” Natasha narrated.

“Yeah, held real tight,” Rhodes said and wriggled his eyebrows and then held his ribs with the memory. “Your romance needs work.”

“Ha,” he said and grinned, not sure he felt like smiling. He still couldn’t remember. But he suspected that something had happened that he needed to piece together himself, without all of them thinking he was losing his mind.

_Perhaps I am losing my mind._

He made a mental checklist for all the things he needed to investigate and look at.

“You said something about pancakes?” he asked. He wasn’t hungry at all, but right now he wanted to distance himself from the room with the mirror painting he couldn’t explain.

“I have no idea how anyone could eat more sweet stuff after the number of waffles you had yesterday,” Rhodes said, “but I’m no super soldier.”

 _Waffles_ , he thought. _I don’t even like waffles._

Had there been a conversation about waffles? Again something pricked at the corner of his brain and he tried to piece it together, he let his fingers brush against the cool metal in his pocket. With the touch, remembrance race through his system like electricity and he stood frozen in the spot.

“What now?” Rhodes asked, unimpressed.

“Steve?”

“Fuck,” he said.

_It can’t all be real. That’s just impossible._

## Mirror: Repeat/Dream

He had always been a light sleeper. Very often he'd sat up awake at night when his mother had been coughing herself to sleep, just listening for her breaths. The sounds in Brooklyn back then had been different from what New York sounded like today.

It wasn't the city that had woken him. Something else had.

Steve heard humming and his back hurt like hell. The air smelled thickly of something like disinfectant.

What had he done? Had he been thrown into a parked car again?

He tried to sit up and realized his stomach hurt like hell. He struggled up anyway, and with too much momentum, his forehead hit against a glass pane.

“God damn,” he cursed emphatically and let himself fall back against the hard surface of the bunk. His voice sounded off. Familiar and strange.

He reached up to touch his throat and noticed two things: the hand in his field of vision wasn't his, then, when he moved the hand back and forth, he realized that these were not his fingers.

The humming noise was all around him. Machines at work. The air smelled _wrong_ and his body felt heavy.

“What the fuck is happening now?”

He’d had enough of alien invasions and strange things changing his world all over every other day. He’d also had enough of strange dreams and seeing Wakanda destroyed, remembering friends vanishing.

“Stop cursing, Tony,” an unfamiliar feminine voice told him. “I told you it would be uncomfortable to jumpstart your nanites. That was no invitation to hit your head against a wall, by the way. Are all humans like this?”

He put his hands against the glass hanging over his head, which seemed to be the culprit of his collision. The glass was cool and thick.

“What’s this, a coffin?” he asked, unable to see the person unable to see the person who was speaking. He wasn't listening to what she was saying, but he caught a part about "patience." “I don’t have much patience right now.”

“ _Right now_ would imply you do usually.” A very blue face appeared over him and he blanched.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“How hard did you hit your head, Stark?”

“Stark?”

“I am sorry, your humanness. I mean, _Tony_.”

“What?”

“That hard? Are your heads that breakable?”

The delicate face above his was adorned with something that looked like metal. He scraped up all the knowledge from science fiction novels he’d consumed over the course of his life and - also from knowing Tony’s AIs and Vison - whispered: “Cyborg.”

“That’s insulting,” the alien woman informed him. “Don’t call me that. I wasn’t always like this.” With quick fingers she opened the latches on the capsule he was in and finally he could sit up. The bump on his head was throbbing but worse than that, his stomach was on fire. The pain spread through his body, wholly and unforgivingly, until he wanted to fall back and double over or throw up or die.

“Are you alright?” The woman asked him. e could see her in full now, but he couldn’t read her expression at all. Was she worried? Unsympathetic? Just interested?

“Did Tony...build you?”

“Tony? Wouldn't you know if you had?” Now she looked surprised -- properly worried, even. Or like someone who realized they were isolated with a crazy person. She narrowed her eyes and reached out, helping him to get to his feet. He finally got a look at what he could see of himself. Jogging wear. Black. Orange stripes. Fingers bloody.

He stumbled over the edge of the pod, feeling weak in the knees, and nearly fell.

“You said it didn’t hurt that much anymore,” the woman said and caught him by the elbow, holding him up because, right now, his knees were doing a bad job of it. He didn’t come up to his usual height. That, and the fact that he hadn’t felt this weak and frail since the serum had started coursing through his veins, finally gave him a clue. He felt like crying. He was dreaming of Tony. Hallucinating.

“It still hurts,” he ground out.

“I'm surprised you're admitting it. Should I be worried?” The woman led him a few steps away from the pod and said. “Are the nanites working?”

“Nanites?”

She deposited him on something that looked like the least comfortable possible version of a chair someone could design, and he groaned when he sat down. But once he was no longer standing, the pain wasn’t as bad anymore.

“If I scrambled the setting and deleted your brain, we’re fucked,” the woman declared.

“Sorry,” he said. “I think it’s getting better already.”

He tried to give himself a moment, but the mere fact was that what was coming out of his throat _sounded_ like Tony -- right cadence, right emphasis on mostly the right words. “God damn,” he said and nearly laughed because that sounded so much more like himself than Tony even in Tony’s voice.

Finally, he tried to take it all in. He knew he had had the dream before, but every time he woke, the details escaped him. Had he ever realized he was in a dream before, when he’d dreamed this? He tried to focus on his companion and realized something else was seriously wrong. He wasn’t on a Quinjet. He’d been in a pod that looked like the sort of creation chamber Tony had built to create Vision. It all made sense, that he would randomly mix real memories, real details, into a dream to make the losses he’d experienced easier to handle.

Was his subconscious taking the appearance n of the wall from a movie he’d seen? He’d been pushed to see so many movies -- to catch up, to be able to get what people were talking about. It was all bleeding together now and he couldn’t tell if this was something old or new.

But as he tried to look closer, something shifted.

In his eye.

Something shifted with a sound, something like fluttering metal wings, and suddenly he saw a strip of wall _magnified_ and red letters that spelled out what kind of material he was looking at. There was a percentage reading _“density.”_

“Are you sure, you’re okay?” The woman asked and new letters came up when he looked at her, classifying her as _“friendly assassin.”_ Whatever the hell that meant. Was that what Tony sometimes called Nat?

Back when they'd all been on speaking terms. Before... 

He doubled over, a force fighting against his body to keep it upright. Something was pulling at him, -- hitting him like a physical punch to his already hurting gut.

And when his hand fell into his hands with a _clang_ he realized what the letters and close-ups were all about. He reached up; helmet crashed against armored fingers.

When he looked down he could see the red and gold metal that had formed around his hands and body. He could _smell_ it, the strange metallic tang around him like thick blood. But immediately he was breathing lighter. Air was filtered. With its absence, he realized what that place stank like: a battlefield. War.

He knew that smell all too well. It must be springing from his own memory because he was in a building right now, outside his dream. His mind was throwing all kinds of things together.

The armored fingers slide over the helmet. Pressure points told him where he was being touched, even though he couldn't properly feel it.

Had he ever truly tried to understand what it was like to be inside the armor? Where did it come from now? Had he conjured it up from the mists of this dream?

Because in this dream he was supposed to be Tony?

“Did you get your wires crossed? Are the nanites acting up? Come on. Get the armor down.”

He thought, _How?_

But before he finished his thought, the helmet was melting away and he saw the armor crawling up his arm, vanishing. He'd seen the armor bleed into life on TV, but it was so different _feeling_ it in person.

Tony.

How had Tony done this? Built this armor? Used it?

Was he hurting, physically and emotionally? 

Steve felt like he was bleeding out, but it was worse because he could feel it all -- the pain, the exhaustion, the aching in his bones, his body fighting the tiredness that was settling in.

Why was he dreaming painful dreams of Tony?

“Are dreams supposed to be this painful?” he asked, not expecting an answer from the alien woman his mind had conjured up. Right now, he couldn't say which was worse: this, or his memory of the way thing had fallen apart with Tony _before_ the real threat had _destroyed_ the world and taken Tony away, and before they'd spoken to each other again. He wished now that he'd dared to reach out first, even with the expectation that Tony would never willingly speak to him again outside of a crisis.  
He hadn't been there anymore for the real crisis.  
A hand settled at his shoulder and the woman sat down beside him, let herself slump forward too. “I don't know about dreams. But this isn't a dream. It's been a _nightmare_ from the start. Would we be stuck here alone on the dying homeworld that birthed the tyrant who did this, otherwise?”

“Thanos?”

She looked at him sideways and said, “You better not be lying about _not dying_. Because you can't leave me here alone.”

They listened to the steady hum of the walls, not speaking a word, until his companion got back to her feet and pulled him up too.

“I gathered some nutrient cubes. Most of what they kept here isn't suitable for you.”

He tried to carry his own weight and stumbled along with her until eventually he was getting used to this body, the foreign feeling of its limbs, with the exhaustion and aches.

 _Must be the dream,_ he thought.

Only when they reached an opening and Steve could see the rust-colored sky did it hit him.

 _Alien planet_.

Tony had never come back from the spaceship and Steve could only assume he might have been brought to another planet, if he hadn't been killed right away. He stumbled along with his guide. By now, he was feeling much better. The pain in his side had diminished and a tingling sensation had replaced it.

Finally, at the edge of the building, Steve realized this was no entrance hall. He was standing in a spaceship that had fallen apart or had been ripped open, but then the sight before him took his breath away.

Everything had this rust tint to it. The ground was a distinct orange-red color, the sky was glowing with the same wrong light that he seemed to remember from previous dreams -- and there hung an orb in the sky that wasn't the moon he knew. And before him spread a field of destruction -- ripped apart metal structures, craters, and dust.

 _What happened here?_ he thought, but deep inside he knew, because this was Wakanda all over again.

And the smell was still the same: heavy air, thick with dirt and smoke and destruction.

It was too real.

Too real to be a dream.

He stumbled back and ended up supporting himself against the wall, saw Tony's body do the motions, and Steve froze. Heaving deep breaths to keep himself calm, he whispered: “This is all real.”

The metal under his feet started to shudder and, for a second, he thought he had activated the armor again, but it was the ship's corpse under them that was moving, not of its own power but because of tremors that were convulsing through the planet.

The blue woman looked back at him, with that blank face that he couldn't read, and told him, “You better work through whatever is going on, Tony. There's only you and me. This planet has been thrown off its axis -- we don't have much time if we want to get away. I owe it to Gamora. I owe it to my sister to go after him.”

“Yes,” Steve heard himself say. He'd lost people close to him too.

They walked through the wasteland together. He didn't dare ask her name because he had understood by now that he was supposed to know it.

“I'm glad I'm not alone,” he said as he took in the extent of the damage.

“Do you think he left both of us alive to punish us?”

He had no context for her comment, but thinking of Thanos and the possibility that he had left Tony alive somewhere to die of his wounds and thirst and hunger and hopelessness, scared him more than the idea that Tony might have gone down fighting on that spaceship.

He couldn't answer, so he bit his lip.

By now, he could walk on his own. The pain had not vanished, but whatever was working away in him was helping. Tony would be fine. He wasn't dying.

They reached a smaller ship that sat tucked away in what once might have been a clearing. Falling boulders had torn away part of a wing and dented the nose.

“Can we get this off the ground?” Steve asked.

“Yesterday you were sure we could,” she said and studied him. “We can scavenge for parts in what's left of the other ships. The flight module took a hit.”

That was all technobabble to him, but he nodded. Tony would know what it meant if he were here.

He looked around the little spaceship for a few minutes to get his bearing and she left him to it. Finally, he found a small device that looked like a video game. Familiar, older than any he'd ever seen because he'd missed that decade of Earth's development, but unmistakable.

“It was Groot's,” the woman said.

The name triggered another memory and he sat down. “The tree.”

“You know about him.”

 _Knew_ , he thought and remembered the tree person that had arrived with Thor in their desperate need. This was all connecting.

Real.

“Eat,” she said and put a cube in his hand. “You need the nutrients. And if you want to, you can complain and tell me all about Earth food again. Tell me about the sweet one, Geldian Woffels.”

“Belgian Waffles,” he said with a sinking feeling and took a bite of the tasteless, odorless cubed mass, trying not to spit it out when it felt like it was expanding in his mouth. “What are we eating, exactly?”

“And the complaining starts.”

If Tony was surviving somewhere and it was anything like this, then it was time someone came for him and got him back to Earth.

 _This_ was worse than the trenches.

* * *

He had a sinking feeling that something was wrong when he woke up. He sat huddled with his back against a wall, like he had fallen asleep while looking out at the perimeter. His back hurt. His joints hurt.

Before him, there was nothing but the familiar dust and debris of what must have once been the center of an impressive city. Tony hadn’t yet taken the time to appreciate that fact. He wondered if this civilization really had destroyed itself or if the true story wasn’t much more complex. He wasn’t going to trust the words of someone like Thanos on the reasons and the easy solutions he’d offered.

Any sane person could see that overpopulation was an excuse of those who thought genocide was easier than solving the problems with a look to the future.

He slowly got to his feet, letting his back slide up against the metal behind him. “Fuck,” he said. “Why did I fucking sleep outside the ship.”

And why was there a blanket wrapped around his shoulders? What was this?

“Finished stargazing?” Nebula was walking up the path they had made that led up to the ship. She was carrying parts that she had likely scrapped from what was left of the ring-shaped ships.

“Stargazing?”

“You wanted to memorize the star constellations.”

“Whatever the fuck for?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Did I waste the whole night out here? Why the hell did you let me?” And why couldn’t he remember? Had he been so terribly exhausted that he’d had a nervous breakdown?

“You were weird,” Nebula drawled. “Weirder than usual.”

“Thanks. Let’s get to work.”

Only when he stood up did he see the words in the dirt, carefully etched with a human finger. When he looked at his hand, he could see the dirt under his nails.

 _Don’t die,_ it read. _I’ll find you._

[  
Art by takamei](https://takamei.tumblr.com/post/180342650355/it-starts-with-dreams-of-a-faraway-planet-of-a)

He stared at it long and hard, then looked at Nebula.

He pressed his eyes shut, opened them again, rubbed at them, stared.

Silently, she waited for him to do something. After a long moment of contemplation, he said, “I dreamed I had the most delicious waffles and abs. My abs were to kill for.”

“I’ll take your word for it about either.”

“Do that,” he said and thought quietly, _you’re going crazy. But all of this is beginning to feel a little too much like magic or the gems were at work._

One thing he knew for sure: Steve looked terrible with a beard. He shook his head and tried to get his focus back on the necessary ship repairs. Get the ship working. Then he could go see for himself if Earth was still there or if it had been taken out completely.

_Wouldn't it be like Steve to haunt me just out of spite._

## Mixed Mirrors

“Look, Steve, you still haven't explained to me how Tony's supposed to have called you from this number,” Bruce held up the phone that received the call, “if the phone that's supposed to have made the call is right here.” He held up the other burner phone that looked as if it had seen better days. He knew the story about how Bruce had found it in the rubble – after the fight in New York's streets that had taken their best hero out of the picture.

“Is it hard to believe that he was the only one who had the number?”

“No,” Bruce said immediately. “But how is he supposed to have called from his own phone? The phone is right here. Tony isn't.”

“I know that.” Nobody seemed to be willing to believe that the call he'd received out on the Wakandan plains had happened, although even Bruce had to admit that the caller ID was there and they had a time stamp for it stored in the phone's memory.

“Why were you carrying the phone in the first place?” Natasha had been silently watching and listening for the entirety of this conversation, standing by the door, arms folded, face unreadable.

Oh, he knew when he was being analyzed, so he turned to her to meet her searching and painfully neutral gaze head-on. “I don't know, but I can see you have a theory.”

She shrugged. “We all know you want him to be alive, Steve.”

“Don't you?”

“I regret what happened or how it happened, but in some ways, Tony and I were much more alike than the two of you. Regrets do not get us anywhere. And if Bruce says Tony's nowhere to be found, and if the Wakandan security people say the same, what do you want me to believe?”

“Do you think it's impossible that we can't find him because he's not supposed to be found? After everything we've seen?”

“Seen? What do you mean? Why would he hide from us?” Bruce asked.

Being an excellent judge of people as she was, Natasha had understood him clearly. “Steve means that perhaps he's being hidden.”

“What would anyone have to gain by that?”

He shrugged.

He had no answers.

He wished very much that he did, but he had to admit that not much of this made sense. Since the space debris had rained down on their heads there was too much he couldn't explain and even more that he didn't _dare_ too. They hadn't left Wakanda yet in part because he had hoped to solve part of this riddle. In bigger part because he was unwilling yet to give up the rooms. It would have meant he'd have to clean the mirror and the idea of it filled him with dread. He couldn't explain what had happened there, and he didn't want Natasha to learn about it and tell him that he had developed a split personality that did things to his mirrors while he slept.

That wasn't what was going on.

But how could he make everyone believe that he was receiving messages from Tony when the truth of it was even more incredible.

Tony had been here, walking in his shoes, while he had been in his place out there in space.

It was impossible to believe and yet he was starting to believe it.

“What if he's not here at all?”

“Why are we looking for him then?” Natasha shot back.

“What,” he suggested and gestured to the sky, “if he's still out there?”

Bruce held up the phone. “Then how do you explain this, Steve? It's an ancient flip phone? Interstellar phone call?”

Helplessly he shrugged. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say when everyone was behaving like he was losing his mind. Tomorrow he'd talk to Thor. At least Asgardians had a different frame of reference for things like prophetic dreams and interstellar phone calls. Perhaps he could convince Thor to go with him and start a search for that rust-colored planet.

Thanos' place of origin.

He didn't remember the details, not all of them. He remembered he'd looked up at the stars but nothing of that had survived the waking. A dark sky, nothing more lingered in his memory and the worry that Tony had been hurt.

He remembered pulling up the sweat jacket and shirt beneath to see the long gash, already healing, but impossibly long and speaking of a deep painful wound. In the dream that couldn't have been a dream, he'd let his fingers glide along the edge of it, to inspect the black and blue bruises forming along the line and see how it had been treated. How had it been treated?

How had Tony survived?

What had he survived?

Alone and pondering what he could do he returned to his room, meeting guards on the way up who nodded or saluted him as if he was an established part of Wakanda now. Right now he wished more than anything that T'Challa was here because he would have listened to him and offered an impossible solution. Or Bucky and Sam. They wouldn't have believed him, but they would have tried to help him anyway.

_Are you mooning over Stark? I remember a time when you were jealous whenever a Stark got close to your girl, pal. How times change, huh?_

Bucky's voice was clear in his mind.

What would Tony think if he knew that Bucky was now gone, too?

He reached the room and didn't even bother to kick off his boots. He walked straight to the bathroom to inspect the haphazard drawing and the scribbled lipstick writing that was in his own hand. Somehow all of it was even more strange to him now than before. He had made this. Last time.

Why had Steve not washed it away?

He touched his fingers to the mirror and wondered how he could break to that wall that was keeping him from knowing what the truth.

* * *

Nothing happened for three days, and he told nobody why he was keeping his rooms closed and private, why he barely dared to take a hot shower for fear the lipstick would smear and be gone and with it any trace of this strange thing that had happened.

He still had the scribbling on the notepad that reminded him that someone who had the possibility to be comfortable shouldn't be an idiot about it. Because if any of this as true, then Tony was out there, sleeping on the hard bunk of a dysfunctional spaceship, slowly healing. Steve tried to keep that in mind and go to bed in his assigned rooms.

And every time he closed his eyes he hoped he'd wake up to have another glimpse of Tony's life to figure out where they needed to go to save him.

The waiting was exhausting and when he went to bed that day he was ready to put it out of his mind and forget all about it. But before he fell asleep he picked the red piece of metal out of his pocket, found the shards on it that looked like broken glass fused into it were glittering strangely and remembered that he had still not let anyone look at this.

_Maybe this is the dream? Maybe I've fallen into dust with the others and this is where we go? Endlessly waiting to be found again by the ones who keep fighting._

He fell asleep quickly despite the nagging worries gnawing on his innards.

When he woke he wasn't in the bed and he wasn't in a glass box and he wasn't in the uncomfortable bunk on the spaceship he remembered from his last dreams.

He was uncomfortably curled up on his side in a nest of coarse blankets and this time he knew where he was at least. The tools Tony had been using were strewn on the floor around him, and this time he wasn't hurting as much.

For about a minute he just stared at his hands. Tony had taped them and wrapped them up and Steve expected it was so he could work longer despite calluses and bruises forming.

Apart from the humming of machines, there was no sound.

Where was Tony's companion?

Carefully he pushed up the shirt again to inspect his side. There was a patch over the scar and he carefully wrestled it free. It was still the sign of gash, but it had healed up, a long brown-red line going from the side up Tony's stomach to his chest.

“Need help wrapping it up?” The blue woman stood in the door. “I was supposed to wake you as we're on the clock.”

“Yes,” he agreed, not sure what he was agreeing to – the offered help or the explanation for being woken. He just knew his voice was Tony's again and he was expected to play that part.

How did you play a tech genius?

“Ah,” the woman said, “it's one of your weird days, isn't?” She walked out of sight with a shrug and he was left to contemplate whatever that was supposed to mean.

* * *

This time, when Tony woke he knew exactly where he was and what it meant.

 _Good for you, Steve_ , he thought. _Have you finally figured out that you don't have to make your life harder than it needs to be?_

Not that Tony was an expert. He was just smart enough to accept comforts where offered. Because who knows? Next time you may be waking up in a cave, surrounded by terrorists holding guns to your head.

He sat up to look out the window.

Wakanda was still a marvel to him. He got up, found that Steve had gone dressed in comfortable clothes this time and was beginning to feel proud of the stubborn mule for getting this far. He had gathered that Steve had spent the last months in full-on warrior mode, not least of all because Earth was struggling with the fallout of their failure to defeat Thanos.

He stepped to the windows to look over the city and all this still felt like a dream.

He was coming to accept that it wasn't though.

With that thought, he leaned his face against the glass and whispered: “Let's see if we can't make you live a little. After all, I can't do much more than survive on Titan. One of us should live the life.”

He went through Steve's meager belongings and chose, in his opinion, the outfit that looked the least sad, then he padded barefoot over to the bathroom where he froze. His memories of the last dream where already hazy in his mind. There only so much he could hold on to when he was awake, but he realized that these dreams had an impact on reality in some way and he had not yet figured out how or why.

Perhaps he could talk to Bruce and see what he could find out. He was going to use his time here well, even though he suspected he wouldn't be able to remember clearly when he was back on Titan. Something might stick and help him understand what was going on.

* * *

“We only need to get us to Vormir,” Nebula explained to Steve who tried to not look dumbfounded as she presented the engine data to him. After all Tony would understand this stuff and he had a hard time following.

“Vormir? Aren't we...?” _Going to Earth? Isn't Tony coming home._

“We settled on getting his attention and I still think the best way to do so is by implying Gamora is involved.”

For the first second the name didn't ring a bell, then he noticed the distress on Nebula's face and remembered Rocket, the raccoon creature, that Thor had brought back to the forge where his ax had been made to make them more weapons to beat Thanos with. Hadn't Rocket said: “At least he won't have harmed Gamora, all bets are out on the others.”

“Peter Quill,” Steve said in Tony's voice and it was as if forcing it out hurt.

“We can pretend Quill is still here,” Nebula said.

That was a punch. He realized what must have happened. This was the ship Thor had talked about. The ship that had saved Thor and that he'd left he'd gone on with Rocket and Groot. And the others he'd said had gone on to confront Thanos.

“Daughter of Thanos,” he whispered.

“It must be unbelievable to you that he loved.” Nebula was leaning over his shoulder to let the computer bring up some more data, he thought. Instead, the holographic image of a green-skinned woman with red-black hair sprang up. “She was my sister. He took us from the planets he ravaged and growing up with him there was only us. He... set us against each other.”

She showed her arm, the mechanical parts in it, how they opened and flipped back together. “He did this to me, so I could be better. Like his favorite. He still thinks he saved us. The truth is he took our life and families away and left us nothing but each other.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Yes,” Nebula repeated. “And yet she was my sister. The closest family I had. I can now be grateful for that. And he killed her.”

He sat back to watch her face instead of the holographic image. “You think we can get Thanos to show himself if he thinks we have Gamora? But if he killed her...”

“The universe is a complicated place. He knows death can be cheated. But if we make him believe that Gamora cheated death on Vormir it might make him nervous. What Mantis saw in his mind, Tony, remember.”

“What he saw?”

“Gamora took him to Vormir to show him where the Soul Stone was hidden. And she didn't come back. And Mantis said he was grieving, but later... before the all vanished she said, he had done it to get the stone. And Mantis said she could hear the stone’s whisper in his mind. Do you remember?”

Of course, he didn't. And he had a feeling he wouldn't be able to remember half of this when he was awake in his own body, but like with the constellations he was going to try.

“Alright,” Steve said. “We need to go to Vormir. Get him out. Get him there. Then what?”

“That,” Nebula said, “is where you come in, isn't it?” She grinned dangerously – and she so rarely showed any sort of expression that it looked scarier than her fiercest stares.

He had no idea what that was supposed to mean or what kind of trouble Tony was getting himself into.

* * *

“I am not sure what S… what I was always afraid of. Super soldier metabolism can burn through all this. It’s not like I don’t work out enough.” He grinned brightly at Natasha who was watching him with doubt in her eyes.

But Thor laughed loudly before he took a swig from his bottle of beer and then held it up to toast Tony — or actually Steve, because of course, Thor had no idea he was not Steve.

Tony grinned.

“I’m not sure any of this,” she pointed at the stack of waffles, “has any sort of nutritious value and you were adamant that you weren’t even that fond of waffles.”

“I’m American. Of course, I like waffles and pancakes and… we should have muffins and funnel cakes and wash it all down with soda, shouldn’t we? Or I should, _I_ do not have to worry about my figure right now. I understand if you guys rather want to eat healthily. I just need this right now.”

Natasha’s eyes widened a little more and her mouth stood open. Then she gathered her wits around her and said: “Look, Steve, we all know how much you miss Tony and how much you want him to come back, but you do not have to start _talking_ like him. The last few days have been an unhealthy exercise in denial.”

“Because I eat like a teenager?” He asked to avoid the question that was on the tip of his tongue: _He misses me?_

“Because you insist Tony has contacted you.”

That gave Tony pause enough to distract him from the chocolate sauce and whipped cream that mounted over the soft and spongy dough of the perfectly smelling waffles. He’d had nothing but strange very nutritious food cubes for weeks. He didn’t care for healthy food that wouldn’t benefit the body he wasn’t in anyway — he needed to _taste_ something. He should have something incredibly spicy for lunch, just to feel it. Momentarily though, food wasn’t the most important thing on his mind.

Thor said: “I was there. The phone rang and they spoke. He spoke.”

“Yeah,” he said because he didn’t want to let Steve look like an idiot — he’d done enough to make Natasha doubt his sanity.

“But Bruce says Tony’s not on the planet and he’s right — how’s a phone that Tony doesn’t _have_ with him supposed to call Steve’s phone. Bruce was carrying the thing the whole time.”

“I have no explanation,” Thor said and inclined his head, “but I trust what I saw and heard.”

“And so do I,” Tony added for good measure, munching on the first bite of rich sweetness and enjoying it.

He kept all this in mind for later, when he stepped into Bruce's laboratory with a bag of dried fruit in one hand, and a bottle of a local drink that he had never heard of before in the other, and asked for the other burner phone.

“I showed you all the date I have on Tony,” Bruce said but handed over the phone with a slightly distressed look. The device looked like it had seen better times. Tony must have lost it in New York when he'd been running out to see what was going on. He didn't remember that.

“Can you give it to me?”

“I just did.”

“No, the data. Can I look at it on my own?”

Bruce shrugged with the air of someone who knew a lost cause when he saw one and set about giving Steve what he had asked for.

“There's something else, actually.” And Tony often had trouble thinking of Nebula and what they had been planning recently when he was trying to think of it here, in Steve's body, but he remembered one thing. They were going to confront Thanos again, as soon as they could. “The data on the Mind Stone and Wanda's powers?”

“Why?” Bruce looked at him suspiciously.

“I know I'm not the obvious person to see a pattern, but I wanted to see if Thor's people can make something of it,” he lied.

“We still need to find Thanos to do anything,” Bruce reminded him.

He couldn't tell Bruce that they were working on that. Obviously, everyone was in some way or another.

“Just let us see if there's something.”

By the time Bruce had handed him a data stick with a copy of the relevant data, someone had stepped in the door. Rhodey was standing there with the tall, fierce-looking commander of the Royal guard that he had met before – as Steve, in one of these dream episodes.

Every time he saw Rhodey his heart made a tiny leap of joy in his chest that made him a little queasy. It meant the world that his best friend was still there. He hadn't been brave enough yet to look into who else was – and who was gone. He told himself silently that it didn't matter because he wasn't done yet. He was just getting started and Thanos wouldn't know what hit him when Tony was done.

“Steve, there’s a situation,” said Rhodey and folded his arms over his chest. “Minor uprising perhaps, but we'd like to be on the safe side. With Skrulls crawling around Europe we shouldn't take any more risks.”

It took him a split second to remember that he was supposed to be the one in charge who _knew_ what was going on. He had barely pieced together yet what shape Earth was in. It seemed a few places were bastions of normalcy and peace while many other places were in shambles. In his state and with the expectations that all of this wasn't real enough to affect anything it hadn't mattered.

Perhaps it mattered a lot more than he expected.

“What's going on?”

“We've made contact with the Helicarrier that we thought had gone down in the Pacific. The remaining crew is asking for you. As Nick Fury is gone, you're the only authority they will accept. It has set them at odds with the U.S. Military and the security council is asking us to intervene.”

He tried to digest that. Nick was gone. That was a blow.

The cloak and dagger playing super spy bastard had been a meddler of sometimes questionable moral fiber, but that was what agencies were looking for in spies. And despite everything Nick had had the world's best interests at heart and his judgment calls had been based on detailed knowledge and farsightedness. That was more than Tony could ever have said about Ross – or many of the generals Tony had danced with in his life before and since Iron Man.

“You can fill me in on the way,” he said, sure he would do a piss-poor job as Captain America, but hoping all it needed was a bit of a charade. “We need to make a small stop over when we're heading over to North America.”

He wouldn't be able to change the tides with hard to control dream visits, but perhaps there were small differences he could make.

* * *

When he woke up, curled up on his side in a position he would never have managed to fall asleep in usually, the first thing he noticed was that his shoulder hurt and was badly bruised. When he'd sat up far enough his eyes were in the right height to fall right on the neon green post it that was sticking to the bedside table lamp.

“Sorry, I'm a bad Cap.” A small heart was scribbled beside it.

He groaned.

Again the memories of what he had dreamed – or his time as Tony on that planet out there on an alien planet that was slowly falling apart as its magnet field was shifting and propelling it out of orbit – was shaky. He remembered some scenes and moments, but now that he was trying to think of them they were already failing.

He very clearly remembered taking a shower after having been splattered with what he still hoped was the alien approximation of motor oil. He'd been in the shower for an inappropriately long time and he knew _exactly_ what Tony looked like naked now. In detail. There had never been a debate about his attractiveness and now Steve had intimate knowledge of muscles, little scars, and birthmarks. Well, perhaps not all of it was as detailed anymore now that he was trying to recall, but he _knew_.

Tony had taken good care of himself.

Even the grays streak of hair that must have formed in the last few months was only making him more attractive to Steve.

 _Stop singing praises of his beauty, Steve. Get out of bed and make sure you see him again,_ he admonished himself.

He reached for the note to collect it, realized again that he was naked and in embarrassment nearly missed that something was leaning against the bedside right where he was trying to climb out. Very unceremoniously he caught himself and whatever it was toppled over and clattered to the floor; only when he caught a glimpse of red and white did he startled enough to land on knees. He turned to stare, shocked and astonished at the dancing disk until it had stopped moving.

The shield.

His shield.

How the hell was it here?

He gathered himself up to inspect it, expecting it to be a specter, another remnant of his impossible dreams. But his fingers slid along the edge and he felt the familiar leather of the straps and knew it was his.

An obnoxiously pink post-it was still sticking to the surface right where it clashed the most with the red of the paint. The writing on it said: _Make good use of it._

[](https://takamei.tumblr.com/post/180342650355/it-starts-with-dreams-of-a-faraway-planet-of-a)  
Art by takamei

He nearly choked, reduced to feeling too much all at once and barely being able not to sob. “Damn you, Tony,” he cursed, his voice wavering. “Damn you.”

This was turning into the eeriest experience of his life.

“Is it the same for you?” he asked the shield. “Every time you wake up and realize I am in your place for a day?”

He felt even more awkward suddenly about the liberty he'd taken with Tony's body, although he'd done nothing more than _washing_.

_Nothing more than inspecting very closely._

But the moment he had the shield resting against his naked thighs, he remembered that he wasn't the only one who was taking inappropriate liberties. His cheeks were burning with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

Tony would have done this to annoy him, wind him up.

Right after _haunting_ him with a kindness.

 _That's so like him_ he thought not sure what to think of it. He'd never been sure what was behind the erratic way Tony handed out gifts and bestowed compliments and then followed it up with a side-dish off sarcasm and annoying insensitivity.

He jumped to his feet, carefully leaning the shield back against the bed and sticking the post-it from the lamp right next to the one on the shield, before quickly gathering up some clothes and storming into the bathroom as if the devil himself was after him.

In the doorway, he froze.

He'd forgotten about Tony's lipstick masterpiece.

It was still there.

And it had grown.

He made a step forward, his face again framed by the untidy and by now sightly messed up half circle of sticky pink. There was pink on his own lips – not on the mirror. Tony had fucking painted his lips and a bit of it was smeared across Steve's cheek now.

But that wasn't what had Steve staring in outrage.

His beard had been trimmed into a perfect imitation of Tony's Van Dyke.

He blinked. Stared. Buried his face in one hand, after he realized that there was a perfectly mouth shaped kiss mark on the mirror in the circle where his cheek was mirrored back at him.

Under the old scribbles that criticized his beard, Tony had written: “That's how you do it!!”

Seething, blood pumping through his veins with anger and embarrassment and the terrible feeling that Tony was trying to drive him crazy _without even being here_ , he took two deep breaths to center himself. It didn’t do him much good.

Gnashing his teeth he set to work.

This time he cleaned the mirror.

Then he washed off the lipstick – finding it much harder than he would have imagined removing all hints of the terrible shade of pink.

Then he searched for shaving cream and a razor.

Under no circumstances was he going out like this.

He hoped _he hadn't already gone out like this._

“If you did this,” he growled at the mirror, “and Nat or Rhodes or _anyone_ givev me a hard time about this, I'll come and pick your sorry ass off that planet and then I'm going to hug you and wring your neck. Just so you know, Tony.”

Finally, when he was cleaned up and looking like his old self, watching himself in a clean mirror, he tried to smile and failed to make it happy. Too many emotions were fighting for dominance and he had no time for them. Not now.

He picked up the two flip phones and then the piece of metal.

Something about it was strange.

Like with what he did in the dreams when he was Tony, he kept forgetting it was there. He hadn't let anyone look at it and strangely nobody had asked for it either.

As if it was hiding in plain sight.

Like people were forgetting just like Steve.

Why?

And how?

He pocketed it and then went out to pick up the shield. He carefully folded the two notes and put them into his pocket too, before he fastened the shield to his shoulders.

For the first time in years, he felt the comfortable weight of it on his back. A part of himself slotted back into place. They had a few rough years, but for that last year since Thanos had defeated them so completely, ripped part of them into the abyss, he had been grieving. Like the rest of the world, he had found it hard to forget about how much had been lost.

But had he realized how necessary it was to put himself back together?

Not until now.

He left the rooms and with the cleaned mirror he decided it was time to go back to the Quinjet and the life of an Avengers.

It was time to avenge all those that had been wished out of existence by a madman. And there was another man out there with a plan that he had to get to first.

With a steely resolve, he marched to the elevators to return to his team and make them understand that he was not giving up the hope that Tony was alive somewhere. Now it was up to him to convince the rest.

The elevator doors opened before his fingers had pressed down on the buttonless control panel.

“Steve!”

Sharon Carter was greeting him from inside the elevator. He was surprised to see her but stepped inside without hesitation.

“You shaved!”

“Yes,” he said uncomfortably. He was still dreading the possibility that Tony had made him parade around looking like a blonde Tony Stark fan.

She cocked her head to the side to get a better look. “You look less exhausted,” she informed him with a smile. “Less sad.”

“Thank you.” Tension crept through the small space with the awkwardness. He had missed something again. Why was Sharon here? They hadn't talked in months and their last attempt at whatever it had been had just fizzled out like a spark that had never found enough fuel to become a flame.

“No, Steve, thank you. I was surprised when you called me in yesterday when things got out of hand with the Helicarrier. I'm grateful you thought of me and set me up as Commander. I'll do my best to live up to the trust you've put in me.”

His throat went dry and he had no idea what to say. Had he done this? Had Tony? Had _Tony_ called in _Sharon_ acting on Steve's behalf?

How had he even known to do it?

How closely had he been watching over the past few years?

 _Think about how closely you've been watching him and then do the math_ , he thought.

“I'm sure you'll do a perfect job, neighbor,” he said dryly.

She rolled her eyes. “We'll never get past that.”

The elevator stopped and they both get out, walking together for a few more steps – then she was heading towards her own transport and Steve turned to head towards the Quinjet. Sharon held him back with a hand on his arm and when his reflexes made him stop abruptly. “Thank you, Steve. I really appreciated all the things you said yesterday.” She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “I'm sorry we never got a chance to start without the world falling apart.”

“What did...”

She put a hand against his mouth. “You suggested we have lunch or dinner and... We never got to do that, but... You're missing someone who isn't me. I don't know who it is and I won't pry. I hope they're not –” she stopped, “you know.”

He knew and shook his head, surer every day that he wasn't lying or deceiving himself.

She nodded. “Let me know if you need anything from SHIELD, Captain,” she said. “Eyes forward.” Then she marched away without looking back, closing the lid firmly on that part of her history while opening a new one.

Her words replayed in his mind as he watched her go.

The seething rage, the confused sadness, the complicated emotions that threatened to overwhelm him at the sight of the notes and scribbles, Natasha's teasing... The truth was glaringly obvious and yet he had hidden from it until now.

He swallowed down the knot that was threatening to form and marched on. Time to talk to Thor and see a raccoon about an alien planet so he could talk to the man who was causing him the worst headaches. He would get a message out and see when Thor planned to return.

If Tony was alive, Steve would make sure he paid him back in kind.

* * *

Tony must have fallen asleep in the pilot seat. It wasn’t the first time that he'd fallen asleep here while trying to wrestle the controls of the ship. He knew immediately that it had been different this time. Firstly, because he clearly remembered stripping down and going to bed, blond and all perfect super soldier muscles, _clearly_ remembered doing so after giving himself a makeover because he had felt high-strung and ready to be annoying.

There was another telltale giveaway. He was looking straight at it.

His hands were resting on the makeshift tablet he'd programmed into projecting a virtual keyboard when he needed to type Earth-style and make the alien system understand him. It had been slowly going without the nanites.

Someone had used his station to type: “Call me, Tony! You did it before, so do it again! Tell me how to get to you. – Steve.”

He stared at the words for a long time without moving his hands.

“Can you explain this to me?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin, because he hadn't heard Nebula approach and the nanites hadn't reacted to her presence. They had accepted her as a friendly.

“Who is Steve?”

“He's... It's...” He rubbed his fingers against his inner palms without taking the hands away from the tablet, giving away by the mere body language that he was nervous. “He's my Gamora.”

“Brother?”

He grimaced. “Friend. Let’s go with friend that I don’t get along with.”

“Ah,” she said and her voice was knowing. “The kind of friend who gets complicated. He's dead?”

Again, he winced, tried not to twitch or let his hands move in an even more obvious show of nervousness. “He was on Earth. I don't know. We weren't talking. That's... I was about to call him before we found ourselves swept into deep space.”

“Not talking?” She nodded at the words. “So?”

“Why does my backside hurt as if someone tried to nail it down with another moon?”

“You crashed.”

“I crashed?” He repeated with an aura of disbelief. “That's it? Nobody involved? What did I do?”

“You flew.”

“Yeah, I do that. And?” He had a feeling he knew the answer.

“You flew like someone who hadn't done it before like this. The armor worked fine as far as I can tell which is why you only crashed once.”

“I crashed.”

“Yes.”

“Nebula, I do not crash if nothing makes me.”

They stared at each other. “You are really weird sometimes, Tony. Really weird. You have days when you're weirder than others. When you crash and leave yourself messages from your lost – _friend_. I think it's time we make a move before you go full on crazy.”

“I've been there most of my life,” he said with more self-awareness than he usually allowed himself.

“That's something we have in common,” Nebula said and her eyebrow twitched, but that was the only movement he could discern.

“Good,” he countered, “because then you'll understand that I'll try and call home.”

Beneath them the ship started shaking, an alarm sounded and Nebula slid into a seat beside them. One of the monitors sprang to life and indicated danger. He couldn't read the symbols; the nanites warning him of seismic activity he understood. It had been gradually getting worse as the crust of the planet had shifted and turned under their feet while the gravitational field put the planet's mass under strain.

“The poles are still shifting,” he remarked while they were still waiting out the tremors.

“Next, who knows. A volcano might open beneath us. Whatever you do, Stark, do it fast.”

“We move forward with the repairs. We keep eyes on the plan. And I will spend one day to reach out to Earth. We can buy that much time, right?”

“You need to know?”

He swallowed. “Wouldn't you want to know if everyone you care about is still alive?”

“I already know that they aren't,” Nebula said thickly.

The tremors were dying down and she got out of the seat. “We need to move fast, but do what you must if it helps you keeping your mind on what we have to do.”

In the following hours, he experimented with the ship's transmitters, let Nebula explain to him how some standard subspace signals were transformed and decoded. He took parts from one of Thanos' space rings and from the base stations to make sure he could amplify the signal correctly. He spent at least as much time on a receiver, trying to use the data of their trip here to triangulate Earth's space coordinates and listen in on what he could catch.

What he heard was nothing.

Nebula came to look in at what he was doing, now and then.

“It's far away, and your people only send probes with music.”

“Oversimplification. But you said there was contact before. Otherwise, how could Quill be half human?”

“You don't want to know. No, really _I_ didn't want to know. Nobody would want to.”

He let her try to use her own mechanical interfaces to communicate directly with the machine and he returned to work on their systems. Soon, they'd be ready to leave.

“There's something,” she declared after a minute. “It sounds like a distress call,” Nebula repeated.

“From Earth?” He was on his feet again immediately walking back to her. “What is it?”

“Sounds like a distress call.”

She caught it, let it decode. It was represented as a series of beeps. “It's coming from Earth, but this is Kree code. Did your people have dealings with the Kree?”

Tony shrugged. 

“Outgunned. Come. Ni-kk Fu-rii. I can't translate the last bit.”

“That,” Tony said already deep in thought, “is because it's a name.”

_What had Nick been up to? Why had he had dealings with an alien race like the Kree?_

“Can you find out where it's meant to go?”

She shrugged. Obviously, it wasn't her priority. A volcano had erupted on the other side of the continent and ash had been spreading through the hemisphere. They were very literally running out of time.

“I can't locate your planet,” Nebula finally concluded and an icy sensation ran down Tony's back.

“Are you saying...”

“No, I'm not. But I'm sorry, I can't find a trace of it. Only this message. If I follow it back it's like a voice I can't reach.”

A void.

Nothingness.

Suddenly the world had honed in on the worst possible outcome. The last gem had been on Earth. What did they have to do to defend it as long as they could? How badly had they lost?

His palms were sweaty.

He felt numb.

_All the dream? Specters after all?_

The earth beneath them rumbled and the ship shook. A warning jumped up in front of their eyes. “Core destabilizing.”

“Tony,” she warned. “We may be out of time already.”

And that was when it hit him. Earth might be gone. Steve might be nothing but a distant memory he dreamed about every other night. Nick Fury might have had alien allies that had failed to come when the Avengers had been defeated. But Tony was still here because Stephen Strange had saved his life and perished instead.

He owed him and Peter – Rhodey and Steve and Thor and, yes, Peter Quill, Mantis and Mr. Clean, and also Gamora, whom he had never met -- to take out Thanos and put the universe right at all costs.

All.

“I do have a plan,” he said, “but you won't like it.”

## Endgame

Thor's arrival was heralded by a loud crash of thunder. Steve had waited impatiently for the chance to speak to him and was the first to greet him out on the plains. He had slept again in one of the huts along the borders, always ready to be on the Quinjet and go where he was needed.

Now that Thor was here, perhaps he could go where Tony needed him.

“You lost the beard,” were Thor's first words to him and he grinned as if this were a good long joke between them. Steve had no intention of telling him that he hadn't been imitating anyone when he'd grown it and that he'd had to get rid of it because he'd looked like Tony – or actually nowhere near Tony despite the best effort at an imitation – suddenly one morning. There was no way to explain what had driven him to shave it off without convincing his remaining friends that Steve had finally cracked.

Without rising to the bait, he said: “Lost, yeah, lost is the right word. You have no idea. Not that I miss it that much now.”

“Better to have your own style.”

He laughed at that because it described too much of that predicament he wasn't able to talk about.

“Beard advice wasn't why I asked you here.”

Like Steve, Thor had gone through a lot too and he was currently splitting his time between Earth, helping the survivors of Asgard rebuilding, and visiting Rocket and Eitri at the forge somewhere out in space that he had told them about. From what he said he was so far away that Steve couldn't even grasp the distances and yet Thor had been here with his ax in a blink of an eye to join the final battle. That meant they could go back to it just as fast.

“You wanted to talk, my friend?”

Feeling strange about his own plan to open up about the weirdness of the last few days, he nodded. “I want to find Tony. I've had dreams and they were more than that and I can't blame anyone here for finding that hard to believe. I hope you'll believe me.”

“My people know about the power of dreams. Were they premonitions? Did they show you what we'll have to do?”

“I can't explain it, Thor. They were strangest dreams or at least I thought they were, but things happened in reality – things that I didn't do myself. It was... like Tony took my place for a while and I, his. I saw where he is, what his current life is like and he left messages for me.” He tried and yet the words wouldn't come in the right order, not describing the events as they had been experienced. He pointed at his shield. “ _I_ went to pick up my shield and yet I had no idea where Tony kept it, had none of the security codes to get to it and have now no recollection of doing it.”

Thor nodded, accepting his words for what they were. “Dreams have power, but I know nothing of the magic to unravel them. My mother knew much about the strands of fate and destiny. She can't help us anymore. What do you plan to do?”

“I don't want them unraveled. The connection – I _want_ it. I want to find the planet. I want to find him, Thor. If he's out there we need to get him home.”

With a long and hard look Thor looked him over and then nodded: “If Stark is alive, then aye, he will need our help.”

He didn't sound as if he expected Tony to actually be alive.

“It is a long shot,” Steve admitted, “but get me to Rocket or get Rocket here so that I can ask my questions. He knew where his friends were going, maybe, and from what I think, I know Tony was with them when Thanos confronted them.”

“He did not know. When last we parted ways with his group of companions they were going to Knowhere and we were going to Nidavellir. But I can take you. You can ask your questions.”

He nodded and turned. Behind him Natasha and Rhodes had landed while they had been talking and Bruce had arrived too, standing with some of the guards. Steve knew her well enough by now to know she had listened. He nodded towards them and Natasha held up her hand to wave. Rhodey mouthed: “Get him back if any of this is true.”

Nobody stopped him, nobody held him back. They were all watching him sadly as if he was going off on a fool's errand.

Perhaps he was.

But he needed to know and somewhere out there he could find out what had really happened.

The dreams had stopped as suddenly as they had started. He needed to know what had become of them – Tony and Nebula on that dying planet with plans to leave, with plans for revenge. He had never missed Tony as painfully as he was missing him now. They hadn't even been able to talk, to touch, to see each other face to face and yet the dreams had given them something that was closer even than that.

Thor took him by the arm, swung his ax and in a storm of colors and light Steve stumbled forward onto his first alien world. Nidavellir was nothing like the planet from his memory – it was a forge, a space station housing a dwarven factory but the air was clear and gravity wasn't dragging him down and he had no way of telling if that was because of this place or because he wasn't in Tony's body. Rocket had chosen it as his retreat after he'd found himself alone on Earth.

The often gruff and unfriendly little fellow grumbled, but he listened too. He didn't show any enthusiasm for what Steve and Thor were proposing. He sounded bitter when he reminded him: “It's been a year. If my friends were out there, I would have heard by now.”

“Will you still help us?” Thor asked. “To find our friend?”

“Guys, come on. Do you really believe that dream mumbo jumbo? Think he's out there? Think a human survived Thanos? Because I know where they were going.”

He switched on a device he was carrying around his wrist, larger than a watch. He flipped it open with so much ease that Steve had to think of Tony. Everything kept reminding him of Tony.

_It's because you've come to realize what he means to you and what you lost before you knew you couldn't lose it. It's why you keep on punishing yourself. It's why you can't find peace. You should have reached out and talked to him first. You shouldn't have left this wound to fester. And now you want to have that chance and tell him what you feel._

It was a selfish thing to yearn for. But he could be allowed to be stubbornly selfish this time. He just wanted Tony back.

The recording of a half-mechanical face popped up and with a voice he had heard before, Nebula said: “Mantis, meet me on Titan.”

“That's where they were called by Gamora's little psycho sister. But no point going there.”

“Nebula, I know her.” He looked at Thor waiting for a reaction. “I know her _from the dreams_. She was with Tony.”

No longer patient Steve described what he knew of the planet. The colors, the smell, the connection to Thanos, to Nebula and Gamora. While he talked of what little he remembered in detail he didn't notice Rocket growing still.

It was the dwarven forge master who spoke: “I know that place from stories. It is indeed what Titan looked last – after its civilization fell apart.”

“You do?” Steve's head snapped up and hope blossomed in his heart. Finally, he had a way to find Tony. He hadn't just been dreaming or hallucinating or let his grief get the better of him. Nebula existed and so did the planet. “Where is it?”

“You will have a hard time finding anything there,” Rocket told him with a half-sneer.

Thor put a hand on Steve's shoulder before his temper could get the better of him and asked: “Why, Rabbit?”

“Because it's Thanos's homeworld. _Because_ it's Titan.”

“What does that mean?” Steve snapped.

“It was destroyed,” the dwarf said softly. “After the annihilation event. People saw the light of it burning out from galaxies away.”

After he'd finally found hope, the words crushed him more completely than Thanos's fist had back on Earth.

“I need to see it for myself.”

Thor looked at his friends until, finally, Rocket gave in. “Not much to see, but I can take you.”

* * *

As promised Rocket took them to Titan – or what was left of it anyway.

He stood behind the pilot chair, Thor had sat down to the side and they were all contemplating the nothingness where once had been the planet.

“Still think your friend is alive on Titan?”

He stared out at the rubble and then leaned heavily down on the back of Rocket's pilot seat, nearly turning them both over.

Thor was there by his side, suddenly, steering him back to his seat. “Is this what you dreamed?”

He shook his head. “It can't be. He was there and she was there and – I was there.”

Nothing wanted to add up and in his mind the words from the phone call – “I never got to say it… couldn't save... “ – mingled with the memories from Titan. His fingers had traced the words: “Don’t die. I’ll find you.”

He'd made a promise and Tony had wanted to tell him something.

“He can't be dead,” he said stubbornly although his stomach felt hard like a bedrock with the dread and tension. “Do me a favor, Rocket?”

“Another? I'm not in the habit of handing out favors without being paid for them. Never was until Gamora started to set us on this atonement good guy path and Quill went along because he wanted to get into her... Never mind. What favor?”

“Where's Vormir?”

Rocket turned in the seat. “Why? There's literally nothing on Vormir.”

“It's something Nebula said. Let's call it a hunch.”

“Steve,” Thor started and put a hand to his shoulder, “it is hard to accept that dreams might be nothing more than dreams.”

“Then explain to me why I knew her? Where did I meet her? How I could know her name? Explain to me why I have the shield now if I didn't know where it was held?”

“Hunches,” Rocket muttered.

“Give me this. If there's nothing there, then I can go home.”

_And grieve again for something I had already thought I lost._

Rocket shrugged and sighed. “Not like I have anything else to do.”

The trip to Vormir took them a little longer than their trip to Titan. Steve mostly sat in his place, arms propped against his thighs, head supported in his hands as he tried not to think about how much hope he'd put into the impossible.

Thor left him to it, walking up and down the narrow pod to engage Rocket in conversation once in a while. He too was brooding. He talked of his brother once or twice and Steve could feel that he had stirred hopes in Thor that perhaps now had been crushed for both of them.

The universe after Thanos was still a cold and dark place.

The dark planet was an outline against the blackness of space and only now did he realize it was a moon hanging half hidden behind a white blue planet that Rocket explained was nothing special. Steve, who had never bothered with astrophysics, wondered how this planet could exist. On one side it looked as if it was falling apart into cloud and dust. An eerie violet light was visible between the clouds.

“Is that a Nebula?” Thor asked, confusing Steve for second before he realized he was talking about the clouds.”

I don't know what that is, but it looks broken,” was Rocket's only comment. The frown on his little raccoon face was as eerie to Steve as the rest of this.

“Can anything survive down there.”

“Against all odds, stable atmosphere,” said their small, furry pilot, and nodded. "Have fun breathing down there. I'm not setting foot on that broken strange-looking planet.”

“Fair enough,” Thor said and left Steve to wonder how they were getting down. But Rocket got them down through the atmosphere and let Thor carry him down the rest of the way.

The moon’s surface was an uneven landscape of dark rock and sand interspersed with long pools of water. “Not deep,” Thor remarked, marching right into one without any regard to lurking dangers. It made sense. To Thor, this wasn't the first planet that wasn't Earth he set foot on. To Steve, this was far from ordinary. Across the dark and dusky horizon piled clouds formed gray shapes against a rim of lilac light. Nothing here looked normal to Steve. This wasn't Earth and it was clear from all shapes, from the lack of sound, from the smell of air that had a tang of metal in it. It wasn't unpleasant, but strange to the sense.

Around them, there was nothing but the stretching landscape.

“There was no sign of ship,” Thor reminded him. “How would they have come here?”

“I don't know. Maybe they didn't.” With every step he took across the dunes he felt a weight settle on his mind. It was time to accept facts perhaps, but if there was a clue at least that could be found that would help him understand what was real and what had never happened — then he wanted to find it.

“Could you,” Steve asked, “take to the skies? Cover more ground?”

Across the horizon, in the dust and clouds, a mountainous shape could be guessed at and only because the scarce light of the hidden sun was falling on it now. “I will go up there. If someone was looking for shelter, that might be the place.”

It sounded hollow even as he said it.

The truth was, he wanted to be alone right now, to see and experience this planet for himself and come to grips with the reality he hadn't been able to accept when he'd seen what had been let of Titan.

Thor, often more perceptive than people gave him credit for, understood and left him to it with a nod. “Call for me,” he said, “when you want me to return. I will let you know if I'm to find something.”

He inclined his head in grateful agreement and enjoyed a moment of utter silence after Thor vanished into the dark sky taking the shining blue-white of his lightning with him.

“I'm sorry, Tony. Seems like I can't keep my promise and find you. But I can do this.”

He started his track towards the mountain like a memorial march to commemorate all the life that had been snuffed out, all the friends he'd lost – but most of all, Tony, the world's best defender, the friend he'd never make up with, and the love that never was.

His heart was heavy when he realized he had truly given up hope and maybe that was why his mind had stopped giving him these dreams, these illusions of Tony. Did he have to come all this way to accept what he hadn't wanted to accept before? Had Tony's ghost made him move on?

He still had no answers. He only knew that something real had occurred that was impossible.

It took him more than an hour to reach the mountain and by the time he was exhausted from grief more than exertion. But his eye followed up the line of the ragged mountain side and he wondered if there was a way up to the top from where he could see the watery plains, the dark sun, the unearthly sky.

And as if he'd called for it there fell one single beam of light on a hole in the mountain. When he reached it, he realized it was a path.

He looked around for any sign of life, for any markers that would explain this perfectly chiseled way into the mountain.

“What the hell,” he muttered and started to follow it up. He was carrying his shield. He had two notes with Tony scribbled writing over his heart and two flip phones in one of his pockets. He would leave them up there and say goodbye to Tony in his way. Tony would have loved it, to know he would hold a lonely vigil on an alien planet just for him.

By now there was wetness forming on his cheek and he told himself it was from the hike, from the air, sweat and snow that was beginning to fall around him.

He arrived at the top quicker than he would have thought possible as if the path had made the straightest line to the mountaintop. Up there he was greeted by something that looked like a built construction, a temple, a landing patch, an alien calendar. He had no idea. But when turned around to look suddenly out of the shadows, a little girl stepped into his line of sight, taking shape in front of his eyes, whispering: “You carry part of us.”

She held out her hand.

He was too stunned to move.

“What is this?”

“This was the place where the Stone was hidden,” she said.

“Soul Stone,” he said, dragging it up from the fading memories of all the things he'd heard from Nebula.

“Soul Stone,” she said and nodded. He wondered how old she was – a little ghost trapped here at a young age.

“Give the shard to me and I'll give something back,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

She smiled, her red curls jumping as she moved.

Tony's voice whispered: “Steve, the shards.”

And only then – only with the ghostly voice touching him did he realize he'd brought more than two phone and two little neatly folded pieces of paper.

“Tony?”

“Give it to me and you can tell him what you never told him.”

It made no sense and yet he knew what she meant. “So many things,” he said and his throat felt tight.

“Just one thing,” she said back. “But it'll cost.”

Her hand was still held out, palm up.

He reached into his pocket for the small piece of metal and held it out, feeling it heat up under his fingers despite the cold.

Her face lit up with the brightest carefree smile, making her look more like a happy alien girl even though at the same time, her body was dissolving into dark gusts of fog and dust. Before she was gone her fingers touched the red metal with her tiny fingers and the glittering glass shards that were fused into it started glowing, green, orange and blue. The orange shone brighter, then the green mingled into it and next the blue, but the orange tried to break free.

The girl was gone as suddenly as she had appeared.

The mountain went with her.

Steve fell, kept falling or rising, floating. It was all one.

The world was gone.

He called: “Tony, I'm here. She said to tell you!”

But there was no Tony, nobody. Just Steve falling through colors and nothingness and darkness.

Then light.

He opened his eyes wide.

Like murky water time flowed around him, dragging him along.

There was Tony in front of him alone on a sofa. Steve had never known him so young. A bald man told him: “I'm sorry, Tony. The must have died instantly.” The young Tony sobbed, went silent, got up walked away.

Tony nearly dying in a cave telling a man that there was nobody waiting for him.

Were these all Tony's memories? Was Steve seeing what only Tony knew? Suddenly Steve was there. He could touch Tony's shoulder when Tony tested his blood toxicity levels. Iron Man had saved him and was now killing him. Steve could touch and hear and experience it all along with Tony, but for Tony, all this had happened. Steve wasn't really here.

Time flowed faster. He saw Tony sitting alone in his office staring at the phone. “Stupid,” he said to himself. “One day I'll call, but not today.”

He put the phone away into his desk.

He carried the phone with him in the mornings, put it away in the evenings.

 _I could have called him anytime_ , Steve realized.

And there for the first time, Titan appeared before Steve's eyes again. “But there are more people, aliens, a human, Spider-Man, Stephen Strange – the Stone Keeper Bruce had told him about.

Was Steve sill falling? He couldn't tell anymore. The fight raged.

He gasped along with Tony when all his maneuvers failed. He looked death in the eye through Tony's eyes then, hearing his thoughts: “Everyone will die if I can't win this. I have to be better. What would Steve do?”

A piece of Tony's own armor pierced his flesh. Steve could smell the blood, taste it.

_How did he survive?_

It was clear now. All these were Tony's memories. He could see them clear as day, even the ones from times when Tony hadn't been in Tony's body – but in Steve's.

He leaned across the sink in Steve's rooms in Wakanda dressed in nothing but a loose towel that is knotted around his hips. He was looking at the mirror from Steve's eyes but with an expression that was typically Tony. “When I told you I hated you as a kid I lied,” he said, “but I never wanted to be you. Now, look at us.”

He let a hand run down his chest and winced.

“Not the time, huh. But you're in shape.” He groaned. “I never told you how often I ogled your ass, did I? Pepper was right. It was kiss or kill with you. That's why she left me that time before we went into a kill-not-kiss mode. The beard looks terrible on you. It has to go. Not my call though.”

He walked into the other room to pick up something from the uniforms pockets. “Must look sweet on a sixteen-year-old. Not sure if it was Wanda’s or Romanoff's. They shouldn't store this in the Quinjet.”

He watched Tony go back to the bathroom to make his circle, study Steve's face with Tony's frowning expression and said: “I only wanted you to like me. Now I'll probably never see you again. This is a dream and I don't know if you're even alive, you idiot. We should have done this together.”

Floating. Falling. Orange light. Rising.

Titan again.

Memories become a rush of battle.

This time Tony stood alone. There was no sign of Nebula or anyone else.

 _I am here, Tony_ , he tired to shout, but here he had no voice. _Together._

Then he looked through Tony's eyes again. Thanos towered over them, ready to kill this time. The rusty surface of the planet was burning. Rubble flew up and floated, no longer restrained by gravity. Beneath him, the ground cracked open and was about to swallow him whole.

Fire around him.

“Did you think you could beat me now if you couldn't before? Did you think you could deceive me when I see all now? Did you think you can lure me to a planet that is falling apart and that'll stop me? Stark, you disappoint me. I spared you once because the Keeper begged for your life. This time nobody is going to bargain with me – and Earth will pay the price along with you.”

Thanos was above him, grinning a beatific smile.

Strong fingers closed around his throat. It was the gauntlet, heavy and golden. Tony couldn't breathe. _Steve_ couldn't breathe. They were one in this and dying. Thanos was choking the life out of this body. The armor was gone. Broken. Nearly broken, anyway.

Where was Nebula?

He was dying. _They_ were dying. Breath no longer reached the lungs. It was excruciating, slow and measured.

But there were some of the nanites left and Tony's thought were the ones that whispered like tickling silk through the quick mind. _This is my chance. This is what we were waiting for._

A blast went off. The ship – Steve knew the ship too – journeyed in a silent arc over the sky and the blast it let off was aimed but not at Thanos. Fire sprang up around them, as the ground cracked further, hot lava burning the ground. The heat was too much. Breath is already slowing.

“Do you think this will stop me? Pathetic.”

Thanos was about to throw Tony into a pit of lava, but Tony's hand were up, on the gauntlet and nanites were forming armor pieces, around the gauntlet, around the gems, around Tony's arm.

A cry of outrage followed.

Breath returned.

But Thanos seethed. His anger burned as hot as the planet as Tony concentrated on keeping them frozen in that moment.

“You do not control the gems,” Thanos roared because he too had felt it. Tony had already gained a modicum of control. It didn't matter anymore. The planet was falling apart. Fire engulfed them. They were burning, burning, hot like a star. “Worthy enemy. Die now.”

A portal. Tony's thoughts were of Earth and Steve and all the things he knew now that he hadn't known before, the things he'd dreamed while not dreaming. If he had known... He would have called sooner, would have reached out, apologized, offered help or a remedy to loneliness. Now it was too late. All dead. Everyone dead. Earth was gone.

 _I am here_ , Steve wanted to shout. _Come back to me_.

Gasps in the roaring of an explosion. A portal opened and the explosion ripped apart of the gauntlet. Stones shatter. Shards hit his burnt cheeks.

Space.

They remained alive.

Thanos, still burning, roaring. Tony longed for Earth, to die on Earth. Thanos said: “No.” With the last hold on the gauntlet and the last stones that remain, green orange and blue, Thanos pushed them through. With the last shred of life, Tony held on to the sliver of control he had of the gems.

“Tony? Where are you? Are you on…?” a voice asked from far away.

“Yes, it’s me, Steve.” A sob at the other end of the line. “I thought you were gone… I thought everyone was… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I never got to say it… couldn't save... yo.. Bad.. iming… Sorry. Wanted to...”

Silence.

They landed in water, Thanos and Tony, both gasping, both shattered, both dying. A moon hung enormously above the plains of water, as Tony set off a final sequence of self-destruction. Time and Soul and Space shattered.

With them, Thanos.

With them, Tony.

Shattering into a million pieces.

It was done.

The voice of a young girl thanked him.

The only thing that mattered was that he knew now that Earth was there, that it would be safe. And with it Steve.

At the top of his lungs, Steve shouted: “Tony! I...”

He fell out of the sky, caught himself on hand and knees. Beneath him was the sand of Vormir, before him was darkness. He pushed himself up, kneeling in the sand trying to find his bearings. Thanos had killed him on Titan.

Dying Tony had returned the favor right here on Vormir.

Real

All real.

Far away someone called for him. “Steve? Steve!”

There was a light somewhere in the distance. Steve started running towards it. “Tony?”

In the darkness, he couldn’t see. But the voice was clear.

“Steve? Are you there?” Out of the darkness a body crashed into him. In the water on the slippery sand and stone, he lost his footing and fell, hitting the shallow water with his back.

Around them, the world was turned into a warm orange light and when he looked up Tony's eyes met his. His face was flushed. “Steve? You're real? And I'm... Where is this? I died didn't I?”

He choked on the answer. “I think so. But you don't have to. You're here. I'm here. And you died months ago. What if...”

“What if what?”

Steve stared up at Tony. Tony stared down at him.

He was stretched out in the water. Tony was kneeling above him, hands braced on either side of Steve's head, his knees to either side of Steve's hips. He was close.

They had been closer, sharing each other's lives and bodies. And yet this – face to face – was what Steve had longed for.

Tony tried to get up, Steve pulled him down into a kiss, startling Tony enough to let it happen. He was the one who started it, who kissed with all the little knowledge he had of frantic backstreet ally kisses. Tony was the one who sucked his tongue into his own mouth, driving him wild with just that. He flipped them around, held Tony down on the water, the pool so shallow it didn't come up further than Tony's ears.

“Steve,” Tony whisper, “Steve, I... this isn't.”

“I love you,” he breathed. “I'm sorry I hurt you. We should never have done this apart.”

“I wanted to call you. I... I wanted to.”

“You did,” he breathed. “You thought of me and you did.”

“I'm dead.”

They were so close, clinging to each other. He kissed the top of Tony's hair.

“We don't give up, Tony. We never give up. Never again on each other, you hear me.”

“I am dead, Steve. This is the soul stone. I cracked it.”

Steve kissed him again, kissed him until both of them had no more air in their lungs. They were drowning in the kiss until they both came up coughing. There were tears in Tony's eyes. “You shaved.”

“You forced my hand.”

Tony let his fingers glide along his cheek as green tendril around them touched orange, touched green and their hand started roaming inappropriately and unstoppable. The power of the stones mingled and whispered: “Again.”

“Don't die, Tony. This time you know. Don't die.”

“I know,” he agreed. “I have an ace up my sleeve.”

“You have someone to return home to. I love you. Remember that,” Steve repeated.

“This can't be real. I... was... from the start I was, but... You weren't... We were never going to... And then...”

“I'm sorry for not telling you,” Steve said and reached into his pocket to press the burner phone into Tony's hands.

Around them, the swirling light of orange had started to pull the world away.

“Don't die, Tony,” Steve warned. “I'll never forgive you.”

“Keep Earth safe,” Tony whispered and brushed a last kiss against his cheek. Then the moment was gone.

* * *

Steve woke with a gasp in a pool of water.

Thor was leaning above him with a worried gaze.

“Is Titan still gone?” he asked.

“Titan? Yes, of course, we were just there. What happened?”

Dread grabbed at the warm tendrils of hope that remained from the vision he'd just had. But now he wasn't sure how much hope he still had to give.

* * *

_Titan, 8 months ago_

A man looked up from a coded Kree message to meet the eyes of his companion. Beneath their ship, the earth rumbled and the ship shook dangerously. A warning jumped up in front of their eyes. _Core destabilizing._

“Tony,” Nebula warned. “We might be out of time already.”

And that was when it hit him: he had somewhere to go back to. But Thanos was still out there and their numbers had dwindled.

“I do have a plan,” he said, “we'll gather forces. Let's see about that coded message. Let's get off this rock and go to Kree space and find where that message leads us.”

## Set, Repeat, Redone

Steve remained silent as Rocket set their course for Earth. Thor could have taken them back in the blink of an eye, but Steve preferred the slow route this time. He needed to put himself together, figure out if he was going crazy. Tony's kisses still lingered on his lips and there was no sign of the metal object or the second burner phone in any of his pockets.

Something had happened.

But it hadn't been enough to change the outcome of the final confrontation on Titan.

“Kree ships set to pass us,” Rocket announced. “Where the hell are they going?”

“Kree?”

“Righteous bastards,” Rocket and Thor said at nearly the same time. “Let's avoid them and mind our own business.”

The ship crossed their course after some distance, followed by a smaller vehicle. Steve looked at it, not sure he trusted what he was seeing. “That a common model?” he asked Rocket. He tried to tell his heart to stop fluttering with treacherous hope that could only end in hurt.

“Common,” Rocket said. “But that one, I'd know anywhere.”

His heart, unable to follow commands like the man in whose chest it was beating, refused to calm down.

And at that moment, the phone in his pocket started ringing.

Thor stared. Steve's throat went dry.

“What is that noise?” Rocked growled, keeping his eyes trained at the passing ships.

With shaking fingers, Steve pried the phone loose. There was still only one other phone with this number.

He flipped it open and tried not to hope, tried not to doubt his own mind.

“Tony?”

“Hi, Cap. Took me a while to finally make this call.”

“How are you making it now? You can't tell me we have reception this far out,” he said, trying to keep calm. He sat down when he realized his hands were still shaking.

“I'm cheating. Armor. Kree. Me. I'm just that good.”

“Yes,” he said, ready to launch himself into space to reach the other ship.

“Do you want to dock your pod so we can talk?”

“We'll do that,” he said and motioned at Rocket, who by now had set a tentative course for the familiar shape of Quill's ship, keeping an eye on the Kree vessel.

“There's someone here you need to meet," Tony said. She's a Captain too, and can probably wipe the floor with Thor.”

“We'll be there in a minute.” 

Then, before Steve lowered the phone, Tony added, “I love you too by the way,” and ended the connection.

In minutes that felt far too long, the ship docked. A hatch opened and Tony stood before them, grinning.

After he’d wasted years, Steve didn't waste any time. He launched himself at him and pulled Tony into a kiss. And this time it was real. His arms slid around Tony -- the real Tony, feeling the real him and knowing -- _hoping_ \-- he wasn’t dreaming.

“I hope this means you're not mad about the beard.”

“I am mad about the lipstick,” Steve murmured against his cheek.

“Oh,” a new voice said, “carry on. I thought we were going to plan Thanos’s defeat now, but I guess we have a minute.”

Tony chuckled.

Thor stepped past them. “I am Thor of Asgard. And you are...”

“Carol Danvers of Earth -- although I haven't set foot on the planet in years.”

Steve held Tony tighter, watching Thor and the woman who had introduced herself as Carol Danvers over Tony's shoulder.

“You drive me crazy, even when you're dead,” he said into Tony's ear.

“I try my best.” Tony kissed him.

“Let's go home and set things right, then.”

He squeezed Tony's fingers and together they stepped after the rest of their little group. For the rest of the journey, Steve refused to let go, refused to lose sight of Tony for fear that all of this was only a dream.

If it was though, it was the best one out of all of them yet.

This time, Thanos wouldn’t know what hit him.

This time, they were going to do this together.

## Endgame: Set/Repeat

_Months Later_

The first streaks of daylight fell on their faces when FRIDAY shifted the windows to morning-settings. Tony stirred but Steve had been awake all along, fingers playing in Tony's hair.

“Good morning,” he murmured when Tony's eyes finally opened. “Pancakes or waffles?”

Eyes drooping, Tony shifted to peer at his face. “You don't like waffles and they don't fit with my diet. I'm getting old.”

“I'm beginning to like them,” Steve said, “and you're the one who says everyone needs to live a little.”

Tony closed his eyes again and buried his face against Steve's shoulder. “I was talking about you.”

“Waffles then.” He didn't get out of bed though and pulled Tony closer instead.

“It is the day?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Nebula and Carol are sure.”

“Alright,” Tony murmured, “let me rest five more minutes and then I'll eat whatever you put in front of me. I'm grateful for every day I wake up and am _not_ you but _with_ you.”

Steve pressed a kiss to the top of Tony's head and then allowed himself to drift back to sleep a little, too. Enjoying the peace and quiet while they could. “Take your time. We don't have to leave for another few hours.”

“Lovely,” Tony said sleepily.

They should enjoy their lazy morning. Because today was _the_ day.

Whether Thanos was ready for it or not -- today, the Avengers were coming for him. And this time, they were prepared.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me for fic updates on [tumblr](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/navaanwrites). This fic has a post on the tumblr [here](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/post/180367401319/my-marvel-bang-entry-resonantia-endgame-set) in case you want to share it. It also has a page on my [Dreamwidth](https://navaan.dreamwidth.org/630751.html).


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